IRRELIGIOUS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does irreligious mean? 

• IRRELIGIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective IRRELIGIOUS has 1 sense:

1. hostile or indifferent to religion

  Familiarity information: IRRELIGIOUS used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IRRELIGIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Hostile or indifferent to religion

Similar:

atheistic; atheistical; unbelieving (rejecting any belief in gods)

ethnic; heathen; heathenish; pagan (not acknowledging the God of Christianity and Judaism and Islam)

lapsed; nonchurchgoing (no longer active or practicing)

nonobservant (failing or refusing to observe religious customs)

Also:

impious (lacking piety or reverence for a god)

Antonym:

religious (having or showing belief in and reverence for a deity)

Derivation:

irreligiousness (the quality of not being devout)

 Context examples 

He had always been irreligious, scoffing good-naturedly at the sky-pilots and their immortality of the soul.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance—an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways—seen anything that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust—anything that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits; that among his own connections he was esteemed and valued—that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling; that had his actions been what Mr. Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of everything right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)