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desecrate
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show 121 more with this conextual meaning
  • Then she can tell it all over town how we desecrated the Sabbath.   (source)
    desecrated = violated the sacred nature of something
  • We don't let Sebring Hillman desecrate what's ours that's buried there.   (source)
    desecrate = violate the sacred character of
  • The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but Janie didn't know how to tell Nanny that.   (source)
    desecrating = violating the sacred character of
  • I am willing to be patient in all things that are reasonable, but in this, this desecration of the grave, of one who…   (source)
    desecration = violation of the sacred nature
  • you whose lips desecrated the word love,   (source)
    desecrated = violate the sacred character of
  • In Pakistan we have something called the Blasphemy Law, which protects the Holy Quran from desecration.†   (source)
  • Many churches had been desecrated and burnt, and the murder of nuns and priests had become an everyday occurrence.†   (source)
  • He shooed them away and stalked to the workshop carrying the desecrated food.†   (source)
  • When the abbot rushed from the monastery to confront the captain— demanding in the name of the Lord that they cease this desecration at once—the captain leaned against a post and lit a cigarette.†   (source)
  • Desecrated, befouled !†   (source)
  • It was built on two Jewish cemeteries that the Nazis had desecrated and destroyed.†   (source)
  • She could still smell the fires that had raged throughout her eighth and ninth years—the smoke of burning books chock-full of ancient, irreplaceable knowledge, the screams of gifted seers and healers as they'd been consumed by the flames, the storefronts and sacred places shattered and desecrated and erased from history.†   (source)
  • This is vandalism, this is theft—and desecration!†   (source)
  • Imagine the desecration to the church!†   (source)
  • At the foot of the four-poster, the seat of a Chippendale sofa had been so carefully straightened that sitting down would have seemed a desecration.†   (source)
  • In silence, Bibwit led the Alyssians through the unexpected desecration to a clearing, where they came upon five giant caterpillars whose bodies were coiled beneath them as they smoked from the same ancient hookah.†   (source)
  • It was easy now to picture what this place would one day become: that sad and desecrated wreck I had first discovered weeks ago.†   (source)
  • Though it is his last name, too, something tells Gogol that the desecration is intended for his parents more than Sonia and him.†   (source)
  • That spring was the period when Americans were shocked by the images of four contractors, their bodies desecrated, hanging from a bridge in Fallujah.†   (source)
  • Basically, it just certifies that Y.T. is not a terrorist, Communist (whatever that is), homosexual, national-symbol desecrator, pornography merchant, welfare parasite, racially insensitive, carrier of any infectious disease, or advocate of any ideology tending to impugn traditional family values.†   (source)
  • But then, if Helene finds out why I'm down here in the first place, desecration will be the least of her complaints.†   (source)
  • Revolted by the desecration, he asked, "What,who, ate him then?"†   (source)
  • He banished them, consigned them to the fire, not to desecrate them but to sanctify us.†   (source)
  • Thus the island was part of a seamless sacred realm that had not been desecrated by an invader's foot for four thousand years.†   (source)
  • And when he cried softly that they wanted to desecrate her, that they said she, Emily, was now a vampire, I assured him softly, though I don't think he ever heard me, that she was not.†   (source)
  • I'm ashamed of our human capacity to hurt and maim one another, to desecrate the body.†   (source)
  • "I'm sorry your temple was desecrated, Divine," I said.†   (source)
  • The murals, some with hundreds of names, are almost never desecrated.†   (source)
  • For I doubt he would have dared to ask the blessing of God on his harsh dismissal of Elizabeth Bradford, or on his desecration of the Bible.†   (source)
  • Like a beam from the jewel eye of a stone-temple god angered by desecration, a searchlight pierced the night and swept the beach.†   (source)
  • What is the meaning of this—this desecration?†   (source)
  • My friend was desecrated when you possessed him.†   (source)
  • Truman was roundly denounced in 1947 for adding the balcony, which was seen as a desecration of the White House's exterior architecture.†   (source)
  • Maybe that's not the healthiest thing after desecrating a corpse.†   (source)
  • On aching knees, her palms spread flat upon the gritty floor, she felt the anger trembling within her, the hurting, helpless anger that answers the sight of desecration.†   (source)
  • A handful of village elders wander the grounds in shock, grieving the desecration by the rebels.†   (source)
  • OLUNDE [mildly] And that is the good cause for which you desecrate an ancestral mask?†   (source)
  • It is "a glorious mission …. to defend our homes from the spoiler," from "hordes of Northern Hessians," to fight "in defence of innocent girls & women from the fangs of lecherous Northern hirelings," or in "defiance to the Vandal hordes, who would desecrate and pollute our Southern Soil."†   (source)
  • Or had he found d'Anjou, capturing his creator himself and leaving with Echo in the van, convinced that the original Jason Bourne was trapped, a second unlikely corpse in the desecrated mausoleum.†   (source)
  • Nothing is more grievous to us than the idea of desecration of holy objects and we shall endeavor to take every means at our command to ensure the return of your precious candelabra.†   (source)
  • In winter mine was the only boat on the river, the sole craft desecrating the steel gray waters.†   (source)
  • If anybody desecrates the temple of God, God will bring him to ruin and if you laugh, He may strike you thisaway.†   (source)
  • Papa's fingers desecrated the accordion, murdering song after song, no matter how hard he tried.   (source)
    desecrated = violated (treated without proper respect)
  • We shall make sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated land.   (source)
    desecrated = violated (of something sacred)
  • The desecrated poster had been removed and the wall scrubbed clean.   (source)
    desecrated = damaged in a disrespectful way
  • The other egwugwu immediately surrounded their desecrated companion, to shield him from the profane gaze of women and children, and led him away.   (source)
    desecrated = violated (the sacred nature of something)
  • Don't dare think more of such a desecration.   (source)
    desecration = violation the sacred nature of something
  • "...this, which we must not desecrate needless." This was a portion of Sacred Wafer, which he put in an envelope and handed to me.   (source)
    desecrate = violate its sacred nature
  • Langdon was starting to feel like they were common grave robbers, desecrating a personal shrine.†   (source)
  • And Doroteo said, "I feel like I'd be desecrating the flag.†   (source)
  • That was the day they made desecrating the U.S. flag a federal crime.†   (source)
  • You permitted a wretched smee to desecrate this holy night and serve as a false officiate!†   (source)
  • But these pictures are not only mockery, not only desecration.†   (source)
  • The townspeople had killed Lupito at the bridge and desecrated the river.†   (source)
  • It was clear the gates had been subjected to years of desecration.†   (source)
  • Do not you desecrate this sacred place—this, our church—with such unholy cursing!†   (source)
  • In the space of less than an hour, we'd shot a guy who wanted to blow us up, tried to save his life, and desecrated his body.†   (source)
  • For although the playground reflected an obdurate disrepair, the statue itself was whitewashed every spring, and even on the dullest, grayest days— despite being dotted here and there with birdshit and occasional stains of human desecration—Mary Magdalene attracted and reflected more light than any other object or human presence at St. Michael's.†   (source)
  • Dead ahead of me but out of view was the infamous bridge where the insurgents had desecrated the bodies of the Blackwater contractors half a year earlier.†   (source)
  • Then she gave me a toss of her head and marched off to the SIM to collect whatever her charge was for desecrating.†   (source)
  • We were both anxious for Owen, and agitated—not knowing how his presentation of the mutilated Mary Magdalene might make his dismissal from the academy appear more justified than it was; we were worried how his desecration of the statue of a saint might give those colleges and universities that were sure to accept him a certain reluctance.†   (source)
  • He said that Owen Meany was "so virulently antireligious" that he had "desecrated the statue of a saint at a Roman Catholic school"; that he had launched a "deeply anti-Catholic campaign" on the Gravesend campus, under the demand of not wanting a fish-only menu in the school dining hall on Fridays; and that there were "charges against him for being anti-Semitic, too."†   (source)
  • The crystals here were enchanted to trap any who might try to desecrate our temple or steal our treasures, even one such as you.†   (source)
  • I began to follow the moon to the abode of the gods …. servant of the white king, that was when you entered my chosen place of departure on feet of desecration.†   (source)
  • After the desecration of his locker.†   (source)
  • What's desecrate?†   (source)
  • I consider this a hallowed place, and I would no more desecrate the idea it represents than cut off my own hand.†   (source)
  • A Jewish homeland created by Jewish goyim was to be considered contaminated and an open desecration of the name of God.†   (source)
  • When the trap had so disastrously collapsed inside Mao's tomb, a desecration that would shake the republic, the elite circle of conspirators had to regroup swiftly, secretly, beyond the scrutiny of their peers.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Smeath in metamorphosis, from frame to frame, naked, exposed and desecrated, along with the maroon velvet chesterfield, the sacred rubber plant, the angels of God.†   (source)
  • You desecrate the dead!†   (source)
  • Papa was anxious to please Grandpa, but not anxious enough to desecrate the Sabbath by singing songs like "Bird in a Gilded Cage" or "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie."†   (source)
  • With me sitting in the swing and Mama in the tall porch rocker, she launched into a tirade about desecration of the Sabbath.†   (source)
  • According to their beliefs, the practice is not a desecration but a great honor—the deceased's counsel is sought and valued even after their spirit has left this world.†   (source)
  • I was an apikoros to Danny Saunders, despite my belief in God and Torah, because I did not have side curls and was attending a parochial school where too many English subjects were offered and where Jewish subjects were taught in Hebrew instead of Yiddish, both unheard-of sins, the former because it took time away from the study of Torah, the latter because Hebrew was the Holy Tongue and to use it in ordinary classroom discourse was a desecration of God's Name.†   (source)
  • By nightfall, the Displaced Person would have worked his way around and around until there would be nothing on either side of the two hills but the stubble, and down in the center, risen like a little island, the graveyard where the Judge lay grinning under his desecrated monument.†   (source)
  • I must rescue the village from the Empire as surely as I must rescue Katrina from those desecrators.†   (source)
  • I'd rather be talked about than have those desecrators camped on the road.†   (source)
  • My father was killed by the desecrators.†   (source)
  • However, they would be just as hard to find as the desecrators, and he could not waste time searching for them.†   (source)
  • All the same, killing one of the Ra'zac's men will only make it harder to rid ourselves of the desecrators.†   (source)
  • Desecrators.†   (source)
  • Your fight, using their methods—and that's too horrible a desecration.†   (source)
  • The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.†   (source)
  • On the parquet floor, where it seems desecration to tread, are two elegant stands and on each a large pot.†   (source)
  • The Church lies bereft', Alone, desecrated, desolated, and the hea then shall build on the ruins, Their world without God, I see it.†   (source)
  • You, Reginald, three times traitor you : Traitor to me as my temporal vassal, Traitor to me as your spiritual lord, Traitor to God in desecrating His Church.†   (source)
  • There were places, then, that the desecrating hands of man could not touch.†   (source)
  • All this was impudence and desecration, and he repented that he had brought her.†   (source)
  • Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them?†   (source)
  • Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare.†   (source)
  • "And as a proof," added the clerk, "here are the desecrator's very shoes, which he left behind him."†   (source)
  • Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and defying the wishes of her dead father, but she would not have given them deliberate expression in an act so crude in its symbolism, so lacking in subtlety; the criminal element in her behaviour would have been less evident to other people, and even to herself, since she would not have admitted to herself that she was doing wrong.†   (source)
  • A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in store for the fair face on the canvas.†   (source)
  • Every way the roads ran out at last into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps and rank wet weeds.†   (source)
  • To one who loves the Florence of Dante and Savonarola there is something portentous in such desecration--portentous and humiliating.†   (source)
  • At the same moment he thought he saw a likeness between his father's mind and that of this smiling well-dressed priest: and he was aware of some desecration of the priest's office or of the vestry itself whose silence was now routed by loud talk and joking and its air pungent with the smells of the gas-jets and the grease.†   (source)
  • He would read it now; she felt as if her soul's history were going to be desecrated by him in his present mood.†   (source)
  • Venters had visited cliff-dwellings before, and they had been in ruins, and of no great character or size but this place was of proportions that stunned him, and it had not been desecrated by the hand of man, nor had it been crumbled by the hand of time.†   (source)
  • …with extravagant tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her disinterestedness.†   (source)
  • Indeed, his photograph was nothing; what she really desecrated, what she corrupted into ministering to her pleasures, but what remained between them and her and prevented her from any direct enjoyment of them, was the likeness between her face and his, his mother's blue eyes which he had handed down to her, like some trinket to be kept in the family, those little friendly movements and inclinations which set up between the viciousness of Mlle.†   (source)
  • On the other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of a man who had known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service to his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie's heart and conscience which made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; her conscience must not be tampered with; the principle on which she had acted was a safer guide than any balancing of consequences.†   (source)
  • The enemy is advancing to destroy Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our wives and children.†   (source)
  • She thought she was prospering finely, but unconsciously she was beginning to desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman's character.†   (source)
  • In going, they overtook, or were overtaken by, people like themselves stirred to wrath by news of the proposed desecration.†   (source)
  • For a long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he felt that tears of happiness were welling up.†   (source)
  • She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband's perfidy.†   (source)
  • The low thunder, muttering in all quarters of the sky at once, seemed to threaten vengeance for this attempted desecration, and to mutter, 'Let them rest!†   (source)
  • Nor were they less careful to prevent any unhallowed layman from touching the pall, which, having been that used at the funeral of Saint Edmund, was liable to be desecrated, if handled by the profane.†   (source)
  • Isabel devoted herself to Pansy's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the injury; she smiled and listened to her account of her adventures.†   (source)
  • If he does not wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it.†   (source)
  • I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as — under any pretext — with any justification — through any temptation — to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory.†   (source)
  • Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortable old house where she had met with no small kindness, ransacked by brokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures given up to public desecration and plunder.†   (source)
  • To his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it a sort of desecration for Dorothea.†   (source)
  • He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments.†   (source)
  • When she pleaded to me her youth, and his wretched and hard life (that was her phrase for the virtuous training he had belied), and the desecrated ceremony of marriage there had secretly been between them, and the terrors of want and shame that had overwhelmed them both when I was first appointed to be the instrument of their punishment, and the love (for she said the word to me, down at my feet) in which she had abandoned him and left him to me, was it my enemy that became my…†   (source)
  • This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are gathered together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines.†   (source)
  • There were, it is true, some rigid individuals unable to rise to the height of such a question, who saw in the project a desecration of the sacrament of marriage, but there were not many such and they remained silent, while the majority were interested in Helene's good fortune and in the question which match would be the more advantageous.†   (source)
  • 20 The poem's final book opens with the gods' dismay at Akhilleus' desecration of Hektor's corpse.†   (source)
  • It was distressing to emerge from her inner temple and find these black desecrators howling with laughter before the door.†   (source)
  • On this piece of carpeting Aunt Chloe took her stand, as being decidedly in the upper walks of life; and it and the bed by which it lay, and the whole corner, in fact, were treated with distinguished consideration, and made, so far as possible, sacred from the marauding inroads and desecrations of little folks.†   (source)
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