heathenish

comparative more heathenish · superlative most heathenish

1. Resembling a heathen.

   The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

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   […] ‘Tobit and his dog baith are altogether heathenish and apocryphal, and none but a prelatist or a papist would draw them into question. I doubt I hae been mista'en in you, friend.’

   1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], chapter XXXVI, in Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC

   Let it not be lawful to use wicked observations of the calends, and to keep the gentiles' holy-days, nor to deck houses with bays or green boughs; for all this is an heathenish observation.

   1852, John Whitgift, “Of the Communion Book. Tract IX. The General Faults Examined wherewith the Public Service is Charged by T[homas] C[artwright]”, in John Ayre, editor, The Works of John Whitgift, D.D., […] The Second Portion, Containing the Defence of the Answer to the Admonition against the Reply of Thomas Cartwright: Tractates VII–X (Publications of the Parker Society; no. 48), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Printed at the University Press, →OCLC, page 447

   Synonyms: heathenly, heathenous, pagan, uncivilized, animalistic, barbarian, barbaric, barbarious