Impious

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Impious \Im"pi*ous\, a. [L. impius; pref. im- not + pius piou.
     See {Pious}.]
     Not pious; wanting piety; irreligious; irreverent; ungodly;
     profane; wanting in reverence for the Supreme Being; as, an
     impious deed; impious language.
     [1913 Webster]


  
           When vice prevails, and impious men bear away,
           The post of honor is a private station.  --Addison.
  
     Syn: {Impious}, {Irreligious}, {Profane}.
  
     Usage: Irreligious is negative, impious and profane are
            positive. An indifferent man may be irreligious; a
            profane man is irreverent in speech and conduct; an
            impious man is wickedly and boldly defiant in the
            strongest sense. Profane also has the milder sense of
            secular. --C. J. Smith. -- {Im"pi*ous*ly}, adv. --
            {Im"pi*ous*ness}, n.
            [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  impious
       adj 1: lacking piety or reverence for a god [ant: {pious}]
       2: lacking due respect or dutifulness; "impious toward one's
          parents"; "an undutiful son" [syn: {undutiful}]
       3: lacking piety and reverence for a god [syn: {ungodly}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  60 Moby Thesaurus words for "impious":
     apostate, arch, atheistic, backsliding, blasphemous, casual,
     coltish, contrary, devil-may-care, disobedient, elvish, fallen,
     fallen from grace, flippant, free and easy, fresh, frolicsome,
     froward, giddy, godless, iconoclastic, impish, iniquitous,
     irreligious, irreverent, lapsed, mischievous, offhand, pert,
     perverse, pixieish, profanatory, profane, puckish, recidivist,
     recidivistic, recreant, renegade, roguish, sacrilegious, saucy,
     scandalous, sinful, sportive, un-Christly, unangelic, unchristian,
     undevout, unduteous, undutiful, unfaithful, ungodly, unhallowed,
     unholy, unrighteous, unsaintly, waggish, wayward, wicked,
     wrongheaded