What does the word Blasphemy mean?
the ‘phemy’ bit comes from a word just meaning to speak, like a euphemism is speaking in a good way about something, with the same ‘phem’ bit and with ‘eu’ meaning ‘good’. The ‘blas’ bit means evil or malice, so that one sense of blasphemy is to slander someone, though that has now become archaic. So blasphemy is pretty much the opposite of euphemism, and what that tells you is that it is in the perception of the hearer as much as it is in the intent of the speaker. Typically blasphemy is used in a religious context, so the person being slandered is typically God. Blasphemy becomes any statement that would be offensive to God … so once again you can see how it depends very much on the interpretation of the hearer, not just the intent of the speaker.
