ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Secular

Definition, Meaning & Examples

Pronunciation /ˈsɛkjʊlə/ · Part of speech adjective

Quick meaning: Secular is an adjective meaning Not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical.

Meaning

Not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical.

More Meanings

  1. Temporal; worldly, or otherwise not based on something timeless.
  2. (Christianity) Not bound by the vows of a religious order.
  3. Happening once in an age or century.
  4. Continuing over a long period of time.
  5. (literary) Centuries-old, ancient.
  6. (astrophysics, geology) Relating to long-term non-periodic irregularities, especially in planetary motion or magnetic field.
  7. (atomic physics) Unperturbed over time.

Example Sentences

on a secular basis
Near-synonym: nonmonastic
secular clergy in Catholicism
Near-synonyms: centurial, centennial

Word Forms

Synonyms for secular

Depending on context, synonyms include areligious, civil, earthly, irreligious, laicist, mundane.

Antonyms for secular

Common opposites include eternal, everlasting, frequent, unpredictable, non-recurring, clerical.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include laic, profane, lay, layman, layperson, laical.

Related Dictionary Tools

Sources & Attribution

FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0

Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.