impiety

From Old French impieté, from Latin impietas, from in- (“not”) + pietas (“piety”), from pius (“pious, devout”) + -tās (“-ty, -dom”).

• Rhymes: -aɪɪti

impiety (usually uncountable, plural impieties)

1. (uncountable) The state of being impious.
2. (countable) An impious act.
   • 1661, Joseph Glanvill, chapter XIX, in The Vanity of Dogmatizing: Or Confidence in Opinions. […], London: […] E. C[otes] for Henry Eversden […], →OCLC; reprinted in The Vanity of Dogmatizing […] (Series III: Philosophy; 6), New York, N.Y.: For the Facsimile Text Society by Columbia University Press, 1931, →OCLC, page 184:

     [I]f the world and motion were not from Eternity, then God was Idle; were all the Aſſertions of Ariſtotle, which Theology pronounceth impieties. Which yet we need not ſtrange at from one, of whom a Father ſaith, Nec Deum coluit nec curavit [he neither worshipped nor cared for God]: […]

3. (uncountable) The lack of respect for a god or something sacred.

• (state of being impious): ungodliness
• (impious behavior): ungodliness
• (lack of respect): disrespect, disregard (more general)