Definition
In legal usage, *profane* carries two related but distinct senses:
1. **Property and place.** A profane place or thing is one that has not been consecrated, sanctified, or set apart for religious use. It is neither sacred nor religious — ordinary, secular ground or object in contrast to hallowed or dedicated space. This is the primary sense preserved in the historical law dictionaries, drawn from Roman law.
2. **Speech and conduct.** In criminal law and regulatory law, *profane* describes language or conduct that treats sacred subjects with contempt, irreverence, or indecency — including blasphemous speech, cursing, and the utterance of language offensive to common religious sensibility. This is the operative sense in statutes prohibiting profane, indecent, or obscene expression, and in broadcast regulation.
The two senses share a root concept — the relationship between what is consecrated and what is not — but function differently in legal doctrine. Sense 1 is largely a relic of Roman and ecclesiastical law that surfaces in property disputes involving church land. Sense 2 is live law, appearing in criminal codes, FCC regulations, and First Amendment jurisprudence.
Common Language
**Modern common usage (Wiktionary):** Unclean or ritually impure; not sacred or holy, unconsecrated; treating sacred things with contempt or irreverence; taking the name of God in vain.
**Historical common usage (Webster's 1913):** Not sacred or holy; not possessing peculiar sanctity; unconsecrated; secular; relating to matters other than sacred — opposed to sacred, religious, or inspired. Also: unclean, impure, polluted, unholy.
The common and legal meanings overlap substantially, but the gap matters in research. Ordinary usage today treats *profane* almost exclusively as a descriptor for crude or blasphemous language. The technical legal sense — a place or object that lacks consecration — is largely lost from common speech. A researcher encountering the term in older property or ecclesiastical law must read it in its classical sense: not shameful, but simply unsanctified.
Common Confusion
**Profane vs. obscene vs. indecent.** These three terms frequently appear together in statutes and broadcast regulations but are legally distinct. *Obscene* speech is unprotected by the First Amendment under the *Miller* test and involves material appealing to prurient interest with no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. *Indecent* speech is protected but regulable in certain contexts (such as broadcast). *Profane* speech, in federal broadcast law, has been treated as a separate category covering grossly offensive language that is irreverent toward religion or deeply sacred subjects — though its constitutional status and precise scope have been contested. The tendency to conflate these categories is a persistent trap in statutory interpretation and First Amendment research.
**Profane (unsanctified) vs. sacred (consecrated).** In Roman and ecclesiastical law, the profane/sacred distinction was binary and precise. Researchers working in those sources should not import modern connotations of vulgarity or blasphemy into texts that use *profane* simply to mean non-religious or unconsecrated.
Why It Matters in Research
**Two parallel research tracks.** A researcher who does not identify which sense of *profane* is operative will follow the wrong trail. Disputes about church property, burial grounds, or consecrated land invoke the Roman-law sense. Criminal law, broadcast regulation, and First Amendment cases invoke the speech sense. The historical dictionaries cover only the first track; modern legal databases are needed for the second.
**Statutory appearance.** Many state criminal codes retain language prohibiting "profane, obscene, or indecent" language in public, often as misdemeanors or disorderly conduct provisions. These statutes are of varying constitutional validity after *Cohen v. California* and subsequent First Amendment doctrine. Researchers should verify whether a given state statute has been challenged or narrowed.
**FCC regulatory context.** Federal broadcast law prohibits "obscene, indecent, or profane" content over broadcast airwaves. The FCC has at times treated profanity as a distinct regulatory category from indecency. Enforcement actions and subsequent court review have tested the boundaries, making this an active area of administrative and constitutional law research.
**Historical sources are incomplete.** The historical dictionaries — Black's both editions, Bouvier — address only the Roman-law, consecration-based definition. They are silent on *profane* as a speech or conduct category. This is not a minor gap: the speech-related legal usage is where the term generates the most contemporary litigation and where researchers are most likely to need navigational support. Do not treat the historical dictionary entries as comprehensive.
**Jurisdictional drift.** The meaning courts ascribe to *profane* in speech contexts varies. Some courts have read it narrowly (blasphemy against religion specifically); others have read it broadly (any grossly offensive language). The term's constitutional reach is unsettled enough that jurisdiction and era both affect the answer.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical sources — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier — give essentially identical entries, each tracking directly to Digest 11.7.2.4 of the Corpus Juris Civilis. This is one of the rare instances where all three sources are in complete agreement, which reflects that they were all drawing from the same Roman-law foundation rather than from independent common-law development.
The Roman law distinction between *loca sacra* (sacred places, dedicated to the gods and set apart by public authority), *loca religiosa* (made so by private burial), and *loca profana* (ordinary, unconsecrated places) was a formal tripartite classification with practical legal consequences — especially for questions of ownership, use, and legal actions available in relation to the land. The historical dictionaries preserve this technical sense faithfully.
What the historical sources miss entirely is the evolution of the term in Anglo-American criminal law and, later, in broadcast regulation. By the time Black's was first published, statutes against profane swearing and blasphemy were already well established in English and American law, yet neither Black's nor Bouvier incorporates that usage. This is a meaningful omission that reflects the dictionaries' stronger grounding in civil and Roman law than in criminal law and statutory interpretation.
Jurisdictional Note
State laws on profane language vary widely in text and constitutional interpretation. Some states retain old blasphemy or profanity statutes that have never been formally repealed but are rarely if ever enforced, and whose constitutional status is uncertain. Federal broadcast regulation adds a separate jurisdictional layer entirely administered through the FCC. Researchers working across jurisdictions should not assume that a definition operative in federal broadcast law maps onto a state criminal code provision using the same word.