Definition
An adverb of legal pleading significance, meaning "in a profane manner." In criminal law, PROFANELY functions primarily as a term of art in indictments and informations charging the statutory offense of profanity. Its legal weight is procedural as much as substantive: at common law and under early American statutes, an indictment for the crime of profanity was technically defective unless it alleged that the offending words were spoken or uttered profanely. The word operates as a charging element, not merely a descriptive modifier — its omission could be fatal to the prosecution.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In a profane manner, irreverently, with marked disrespect for the sacred.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): In a profane manner. ("The character of God profanely impeached." — Dr. T. Dwight.)
The common meaning and the legal meaning are not in conflict, but the legal significance of the word far exceeds its ordinary function. In everyday and literary use, PROFANELY is a straightforward adverb describing irreverent conduct or speech. In legal pleading, it becomes a technical requirement — a word of art whose presence or absence determined whether a criminal charge could survive challenge. A researcher encountering the term in a historical indictment should read it not as mere description but as a formal charging element with substantive procedural consequences.
Common Confusion
PROFANELY is sometimes treated as interchangeable with BLASPHEMOUSLY in historical sources, but the two carried distinct legal weight. Blasphemy, at common law and under many statutes, was a broader and more serious offense — typically involving denial of the existence of God, contempt for Scripture, or attacks on the foundations of the Christian religion. Profanity, and the adverb PROFANELY used to charge it, generally covered the irreverent use of sacred names or oaths in common speech. An indictment for blasphemy did not necessarily require the word PROFANELY, and vice versa. Bouvier makes this distinction tractable by treating PROFANENESS and BLASPHEMY as separate entries. Researchers should not assume that historical sources using one term encompass the other.
Why It Matters in Research
PROFANELY is almost never encountered outside the context of criminal indictments and statutory profanity prosecutions. Its presence in a historical document is a reliable marker that you are reading a formal charging instrument or a treatise discussing the technical requirements of such instruments.
The key research trap is treating the word as merely descriptive when it appears in legal materials. When Bouvier states that it is "requisite that the words should be laid to have been spoken profanely," he is identifying a pleading requirement, not offering a definition. Failure to appreciate this distinction can cause researchers to misread the procedural posture of historical cases — a court dismissing a profanity indictment may have done so not because the conduct was innocent, but because this precise word was absent from the charging language.
Jurisdictional variation matters significantly here. The Pennsylvania statute and the case Updegraph v. Commonwealth (11 Serg. & R. 394) are the anchor authorities in the historical dictionaries, but profanity statutes varied widely across states in both their elements and their pleading requirements. What was technically required in a Pennsylvania indictment may not have been required in Virginia or Massachusetts. Researchers working across jurisdictions should locate the governing statute and any reported cases interpreting its pleading requirements rather than generalizing from Pennsylvania precedent.
The term also flags a broader doctrinal area worth tracking: the intersection of criminal law and religious expression in early American law. Profanity prosecutions declined sharply through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as First Amendment doctrine developed, and the statutory offense of profanity as historically understood is now largely a dead letter at the felony level. Researchers tracing this decline will find PROFANELY appearing frequently in early reports and disappearing from later ones — its absence from modern indictments is itself historically informative.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition: PROFANELY means "in a profane manner" and is a technical term of pleading in statutory profanity prosecutions. The first and second editions of Black's are nearly identical, with the second edition adding the full citation to Updegraph v. Commonwealth and correcting a typographical artifact. Bouvier's is the most substantive, embedding the definition within a broader discussion of PROFANENESS and BLASPHEMY as criminal law concepts and directing the reader to Cooley's Constitutional Limitations — a signal that even in Bouvier's time, the constitutional dimensions of profanity regulation were recognized as non-trivial.
No source provides meaningful treatment of what happens when the word is omitted from an indictment, though the implication of technical necessity runs through all three. Modern researchers will need to consult the underlying case law and statutory history to reconstruct the full procedural picture; the dictionaries function here as pointers rather than as complete authorities.
Jurisdictional Note
The historical authorities concentrate heavily on Pennsylvania law and the Updegraph line of cases. Profanity statutes existed across most American jurisdictions, but their elements and pleading requirements were not uniform. First Amendment doctrine has substantially foreclosed criminal profanity prosecution as a matter of constitutional law in modern practice, making this term primarily relevant to historical legal research.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Profanity (statutory offense); Blasphemy; Criminal Offenses Against Public Morals; Pleading (criminal indictment requirements)