secle

Noun

secle (plural secles)

1. (obsolete) A century.
   • Of a man's age, part he lives in his father's life-time, and part after his son's birth; and thereupon it is wont to be said that three generations make one secle, or hundred years in the genealogies.1644, Henry Hammond, Practical Catechism
2. (Ancient-Rome) The length of an epoch, believed to be the amount of time that elapsed from the start of one epoch to the time when no one who was alive at that point is still alive (starting at the founding of Rome).
   • If on this principle we calculate back from this first secular epoch preserved in history, the beginning ot the second secle falls U.C. 78.1845, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Sir Travers Twiss, Niebuhr's History of Rome - Volumes 1-2, page 55
   • Such a secular year therefore was probably the term assigned to the life of the gods, as the natural secle was to the life of man, the secular day to that of nations, the secular week to that of one human race. They taught, as we know historically, that the expiration of each secular day was...1847, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Leonhard Schmitz, The History of Rome - Volume 1, page 138