Subscriber login


Forgot your password?

Library card login

Other

secular

Pronunciation: /ˈsɛkjʊlə/
Translate secular | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of secular

adjective

  • 1not connected with religious or spiritual matters:secular buildings secular attitudes to deathContrasted with sacred.
  • 2 Christian Church (of clergy) not subject to or bound by religious rule; not belonging to or living in a monastic or other order. Contrasted with regular.
  • 3 Astronomy of or denoting slow changes in the motion of the sun or planets.
  • 4 Economics (of a fluctuation or trend) occurring or persisting over an indefinitely long period:there is evidence that the slump is not cyclical but secular
  • 5occurring once every century or similarly long period (used especially in reference to celebratory games in ancient Rome).

noun

  • a secular priest.

Derivatives

secularism

noun

secularist

noun

secularity

Pronunciation: /-ˈlarɪti/
noun

secularization

Pronunciation: /-ˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/
(also secularisation) noun

secularize

(also secularise) verb

secularly

adverb

Origin:

Middle English: secular (sense 1 of the adjective), secular (sense 2 of the adjective) from Old French seculer, from Latin saecularis, from saeculum 'generation, age', used in Christian Latin to mean 'the world' (as opposed to the Church); secular (sense 3 of the adjective), secular (sense 4 of the adjective), secular (sense 5 of the adjective) (early 19th century) from Latin saecularis 'relating to an age or period'

secular in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of secular in the US English dictionary

Nearby words

  |  Cite

Word of the day

epithalamium

/ ˌɛpɪθəˈleɪmɪəm /
noun
a song or poem celebrating a marriage …