desanctify

present singular third person desanctifies · participle present desanctifying · participle past desanctified · past desanctified

1. transitiveTo remove the sanctified status of.

   Christianity desanctifies these in a positive sense by rendering them subservient to an entirely different kind of holiness.

   1997 August 28, Martin Buber, Israel and the World, page 178

   3 more examples

   His utopias aren't "nowhere" -- counterfactual examples of how things might be in order to desanctify how things actually are.

   1991 September 22, Alan Trachtenberg, “UNIVERSITY PRESSES; Shaping America's Dreams in Chicago”, in The New York Times

   In so doing, he transforms the Foxian compulsion to distinguish true martyrs from false ones —and thus to differentiate his own saint-making project from medieval hagiography—into a model of textual criticism, directed at detecting and desanctifying the false martyr through the critical medium of marginalia.

   2008, Jennifer Summit, Memory's Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England, page 170

   What qualifies? Anything that could significantly influence your deciding whether to rent the place — low-flying jets, overflowing drains or desanctified brothels.

   2009 October 29, Randy Cohen, “Our Home Was a Bawdy House”, in The New York Times Magazine

   Synonyms: desacralize, desecrate, unconsecrate