DESECRATE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does desecrate mean? 

• DESECRATE (verb)
  The verb DESECRATE has 2 senses:

1. violate the sacred character of a place or language

2. remove the consecration from a person or an object

  Familiarity information: DESECRATE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DESECRATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they desecrate    ... he / she / it desecrates   
Past simple: desecrated   
Past participle: desecrated   
-ing form: desecrating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Violate the sacred character of a place or language

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

desecrate; outrage; profane; violate

Context example:

profane the name of God

Hypernyms (to "desecrate" is one way to...):

assail; assault; attack; set on (attack someone physically or emotionally)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

desecration (blasphemous behavior; the act of depriving something of its sacred character)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Remove the consecration from a person or an object

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

deconsecrate; desecrate; unhallow

Hypernyms (to "desecrate" is one way to...):

change by reversal; reverse; turn (change to the contrary)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

Antonym:

consecrate (render holy by means of religious rites)

 Context examples 

She thought she was prospering finely, but unconsciously she was beginning to desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman's character.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

In the center of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis Quinze table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Keep this near your heart—as he spoke he lifted a little silver crucifix and held it out to me, I being nearest to him—put these flowers round your neck—here he handed to me a wreath of withered garlic blossoms—for other enemies more mundane, this revolver and this knife; and for aid in all, these so small electric lamps, which you can fasten to your breast; and for all, and above all at the last, this, which we must not desecrate needless.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

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.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)