unreligiousadj.

a1382 Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.) (Douce 369(1)) (1850) 3 Esdras i. 24 Who so euere weren vnreligious [L. inreligiosi] aȝen the Lord.

?c1450 in G. J. Aungier Hist. & Antiq. Syon Monastery (1840) 361 (MED) For often tymes statly and unreligious porte causeth murmur and grudgynge to other.

a1500 tr. Thomas à Kempis De Imitatione Christi (Trin. Dublin) (1893) 34 Þan shal..euery vnreligious [L. irreligiosus] man sorowe.

1548 N. Udall et al. tr. Erasmus Paraphr. Newe Test. I. John xi. 74 Nothyng is more vnreligyouse than Jewish religion, whiche consisteth in visible thinges.

1577 W. Fulke Answer True Christian 11 in Two Treat. against Papistes These vnreligious and vngodly opinions of God.

1606 T. Dekker Double PP sig. A4^v Hee dare presse To th' Eaves of Bishops Pallaces: Where, harsh and vn-religious notes Hee singes against their Reuerend Coates.

1659 J. Rogers Διαπολιτεία 14 Most unreasonable and unreligious is the matter and forme of it, against the Lord's servants.

1734 T. Rundle Serm. preached at St. George's Church Hanover Square 11 The squandring his fortune.., which is never praised and esteemed, even by those who surfeit with his unreligious generosity.

1828 E. Holmes Ramble among Musicians Germany 31 His [sc. the organist's] interludes..amazed me, from their unreligious and anomalous mixture of the music of a ballet or tea-garden with the cloistral severity of the chaunt.

1869 F. Marryat Véronique I. xix. 262 With an expression, at once unpremeditated, unfraternal, and unreligious, Gordon Romilly hurled a negative at his ecclesiastical brother's head.

1905 J. C. Lincoln Partners of Tide v. 90 But 'twould be like sellin' our everlastin' souls—if 'taint unreligious to say it.

1999 S. R. F. Price Relig. Anc. Greeks (2004) 85 Threats to the religious system were not always unreligious acts, like the mutilation of the herms.

1814 W. Wordsworth Excursion iv. 168 If unreligious, let him be at once, Among ten thousand Innocents, enrolled A Pupil. View more context for this quotation

1838 E. Eden in Up the Country (1983) 230 Nine officers..stayed the communion to-day, which is a great many for so unreligious a country as India. It is not irreligious, but people live without seeing a clergyman or a church till they forget all about them.

1912 Mag. of Hist. Jan. 31 My own opinion is that Lincoln was an unreligious man... There is some evidence however, that with increasing care and responsibility came some measure of religious conviction.

1929 E. S. Conklin Psychol. Relig. Adjustment xi. 174 A prayer might..be very effectively worded and be recited perfectly by a wholly unreligious person who cared nothing for the prayer itself.

1986 M. Schneider Vengeance of Victim i. 15 Wrenching the then-twenty-two-year-old, assimilated, unreligious Jew from the heart of bourgeois, provincial Ferrara.

2013 H. Eyres Horace & Me x. 166 I was the son of a Catholic convert mother and an utterly unreligious, nominally Church of England father.

1832 Fraser's Mag. June 627 The same act which has set up the unreligious system, has dismantled the religious schools.

1855 H. H. Milman Hist. Lat. Christianity VI. xiv. v. 508 The popular poetry..became profane, unreligious, at length in some parts irreligious.

1871 R. H. Hutton Ess. I. 88 The difficulties involved in the conception of Creation being, however, totally unreligious.

1898 Educ. Rev. 15 392 Education has become quite unreligious.

1914 Harvard Advocate 18 June 134/2 Many men who work there do so from perfectly unreligious reasons; few who work there are actuated even mainly by religious zeal.

1990 D. Stern in D. Stern & M. J. Mirsky Rabbinic Fantasies 4 Matters that we would categorize as wholly unreligious—the travails of love or the pleasures of good company.

a1500 Let. Alexander l. 383 in Mediaeval Stud. (1979) 41 135 In Ethiope we saw..the denne or cave..the thrid day of fevers or acces thei dien whiche presumen to entre vnreligiously.

1847 R. W. Emerson Poems 179 We invade them impiously for gain, We devastate them unreligiously.

1994 W. Maples & M. Browning Dead Men do tell Tales i. 5 I was brought up unreligiously, but with a set of hard, clear-cut moral values.

1579 W. Fulke Heskins Parl. Repealed in D. Heskins Ouerthrowne 30 Although there be great rashnesse in some, and vnreligiousnesse in more.

1857 Monthly Christian Spectator Sept. 568 Absolute unreligiousness, by any ignoring process whatsoever, is impossible to the human mind.

2007 D. Stassen & I. Tödt tr. H. E. Tödt Authentic Faith i. 14 Hitler..was able to awaken much naïve belief..that, after the collapse of the Nazi regime, was bound to end up as its opposite, namely, unreligiousness.