mindmap root((神圣)) sacred implies either a setting apart for a special use: the battered chair by the fireside that was ~ to father; or a special quality that leads to an almost religious reverence: a ~ memory. sacrosanct in general use may retain its religious implication of the utmost of sacredness, or it may take on an ironic quality and suggest a supposed rather than a real sacredness: failed to accept that such public figures were ~. inviolate applies to such things as laws, agreements, institutions, or persons which for one reason or another are secure from abuse or injury, and it stresses the fact of not having been violated: the ~ beauty of the wilderness. inviolable while close to inviolate, implies a character that is secure from violation: the ~ sanctity of the law.