impious

From Latin impius.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪmpi.əs/, /ɪmˈpaɪəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

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impious (comparative more impious, superlative most impious)

1. Not pious.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 114, column 2:

     […] I alvvayes thought / It vvas both impious and vnnaturall, / That ſuch immanity and bloody ſtrife / Should reigne among Profeſſors of one Faith.

2. Lacking reverence or respect, especially towards a god.
   • 1928 February, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 11, number 2, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, pages 159–178 and 287:

     […] surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs.

• irreverent
• ungodly
• unholy

• pious

• impiously
• impiousness

• impiety