Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Hostile or indifferent to religion; ungodly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not religious; without religious principles; contemning religion; impious; ungodly.
  • Profane; wicked: as, irreligious conduct.
  • Synonyms Irreligious, Godless, Ungodly, Unrighteous, Impious, Profane, Atheistic, are words expressing the position or conduct of those who deny the existence of a God or refuse to obey his commandments. Irreligious means destitute of religion as a principle, contemning religion and not checked by its restraints; godless, acknowledging no God, disregarding God and therefore his commandments, sinful, wicked; ungodly, essentially the same as godless, but stronger as to both feeling and action; unrighteous, disregarding right, contrary to right and by implication (right being with this word viewed chiefly as the personal will of God) not only wrong or unjust, but sinful; impious, irreverent or contemptuous toward God, defiant or wanton in irreligion; profane, impious by word or deed, irreverent or blasphemous; atheistic, holding the doctrine of the non-existence of a God (applied, on account, of the natural tendency of men to deny the existence of a God where their spirit or manner of life is condemned by the teachings of the Christian religion, to whatever would be thus condemned or whoever thus denies). See atheous, 2.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Destitute of religion; not controlled by religious motives or principles; ungodly. Cf. Impious.
  • adjective Indicating a lack of religion; profane; wicked.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Contrary to religious beliefs and practices.
  • adjective Describing a conscious rejection of religion.
  • adjective Having no relation to religion; non-religious.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective hostile or indifferent to religion

Etymologies

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Examples

  • No. Implying that all the arts and sciences are irreligious is very like saying that all professions except that of the law are not about the law.

    Berlinski's Wisdom 2010

  • I don’t think acceptance of irreligious is anything like the acceptance of same-sex marriage, actually.

    The Fort Hood shooting suspect’s religion is not the point « Dating Jesus 2009

  • Forty thousand word irreligious John Carpenter homage?

    Mind Meld, Matelotage and Mutiny Hal Duncan 2009

  • Then the irreligious son of a religious father should be called irreligious?

    The CRATYLUS Plato 1975

  • Yet as I study the character of the samurai of the Tokugawa period, who alone may be called the irreligious of the olden times, I see good reasons for holding that, though rejecting Buddhism, they were religious at heart.

    Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic Sidney Lewis Gulick 1902

  • SOCRATES: Then the irreligious son of a religious father should be called irreligious?

    Cratylus 427? BC-347? BC Plato 1855

  • We certainly have a long ways to go, but the 16 percent of Americans who self-identify as irreligious certainly sounds good, right?

    SocraticGadfly 2009

  • "irreligious" - or actively against religion - after virtually none of them fit that description as teenagers.

    unknown title 2009

  • 'irreligious' - or actively against religion - after virtually none of them fit that description as teenagers., most of the club's roughly 30 members are 'former' somethings, mostly Christians.

    Matthew Yglesias 2009

  • "irreligious" - or actively against religion - after virtually none of them fit that description as teenagers.

    News 2009

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