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Secular   /sˈɛkjələr/   Listen
Secular

adjective
1.
Of or relating to the doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations.
2.
Characteristic of or devoted to the temporal world as opposed to the spiritual world.  Synonyms: temporal, worldly.  "Temporal possessions of the church"
3.
Not concerned with or devoted to religion.  Synonym: profane.  "Secular drama" , "Secular architecture" , "Children being brought up in an entirely profane environment"
4.
Of or relating to clergy not bound by monastic vows.
5.
Characteristic of those who are not members of the clergy.  Synonyms: laic, lay.  "The lay ministry"
noun
1.
Someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person.  Synonyms: layman, layperson.



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"Secular" Quotes from Famous Books



... extreme interest. There are grounds for thinking that flowers and insects have mutually reacted upon one another in their evolution. Guppy suggests that something of the same kind may be true of birds. I must content myself with the quotation of a single sentence. "With the secular drying of the globe and the consequent differentiation of climate is to be connected the suspension to a great extent of the agency of birds as plant dispersers in later ages, not only in the Pacific Islands but all over the tropics. The changes ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... islands to Spain, writes in behalf of his brethren there (1585?) to ask the king that more religious be sent to the Philippines and to other Oriental lands; that these friars be sent from Spain by way of India instead of Nueva Espana; that the authorities of India, secular and ecclesiastical, be commanded to aid the friars in their missionary journeys; that the latter be permitted to build monasteries as they may choose, "in remote and infidel lands," without awaiting government permission; and that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... were, the breath of past ages. The multitude of lights, the polished floor of costly wood, the bare whiteness of walls wainscotted with marble, the vastness of the room, the imposing forms of furniture, carved heavily in ebony, impressed me with a sense of secular and austere magnificence. For centuries there had always been a Riego living in this fortress-like palace, ruling this portion of the New World with the whole majesty of his race. And I thought of the long, loop-holed, buttressed walls that this abode of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... attests, had "sat" before her marriage; the marriage so lamentedly diverting her indeed from this tradition that, to mark the rueful rupture, it had invoked, one evening, with the aid of India muslin and a wondrous gold headband, in the maternal, the Washington Square "parlours," but the secular nuptial consecration of the then Mayor of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... language of the culture of the latter. First the Digambara and later the ['S]vetambara began to use Sanskrit. They did not rest content with explaining their own teaching in Sanskrit works: they turned also to the secular sciences of the Brahma[n.]s. They have accomplished so much of importance, in grammar, in astronomy, as well as in some branches of letters, that they have won respect even from their enemies, and some of their works are still of importance to European science. ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler


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