desanctify

From de- +‎ sanctify.

desanctify (third-person singular simple present desanctifies, present participle desanctifying, simple past and past participle desanctified)

1. (transitive) To remove the sanctified status of.
   • 1991 September 22, Alan Trachtenberg, “UNIVERSITY PRESSES; Shaping America's Dreams in Chicago”, in The New York Times‎:

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

   • 1997 August, Martin Buber, Israel and the World‎, page 178:

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

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

     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.

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

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

• desacralize, desecrate, unconsecrate; see also Thesaurus:desecrate

• desanctification