Word.ws English Dictionary

sectarian

UK/sɛkˈtɛəɹi.ən//sɛkˈtɛɹi.ən/

sectarian adjective: of, relating to, or partial to a sect.

Adjective

sectarian (comparative more sectarian, superlative most sectarian)

  1. Of, relating to, or partial to a sect.
    • We were discussing solutions to the sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias.
  2. Dogmatic or partisan.
    • The Hariri-Aoun agreement has shown that Hezbollah can bring the national political system to a halt. This happened in the past several years, and it worsened conditions in sectors such as foreign debt, electricity output, rubbish collection, water delivery, and other essential services, to the...2016 October 22, Rami G Khouri, “Lebanese oligarchy preserves its interests once again”, in Al Jazeera, archived from the original on 13 May 2022
  3. Parochial or narrow-minded.
  4. Bigoted.

Noun

sectarian (plural sectarians)

  1. A member of a sect.
    • An American sectarian, who has always lived within the high walls and in the close atmosphere of our intense sect-life here, and has always been accustomed to the dragonism of sect-authority and sect-jealousy, —is utterly amazed when for the first time he looks over his native sect-walls and comes...1870, The Millennial Harbinger - Volume 41, page 423
  2. A bigot.

sectarian meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

sectarian in Hindi

संप्रदायवादी

sectarian in Marathi

पंथीय

sectarian in Urdu

sectarian
مذہبی mazhabī

sectarian in Bengali

সাম্প্রদায়িক, দলীয়
More languagesFewer languages
sectarian in Malayalam
വിഭാഗീയചിന്താഗതിയുള്ള, വർഗ്ഗീയതയുള്ള, വിഭാഗ, വിഭാഗീയമായ
sectarian in Kannada
ಕೂಟದ, ಕುರುಡು ನಂಬಿಕೆಯ, ಪಂಥಾನುಯಾಯಿ, ಪಂಥಾಭಿಮಾನಿ
sectarian in Punjabi
ਸੰਪਰਦਾਇਕੀ, ਪੰਥਵਾਦੀ
sectarian in Gujarati
સંપ્રદાયવાદી

Examples of sectarian in a sentence

  • A mixture of various sectarians coexisted in the west of the county.
  • It is that every sectarian is more sectarian in his unsectarianism than he is in his sect.
  • In the very nature of the case a college can not be sectarian.

All 11 example sentences with sectarian

Antonyms of sectarian

Forms of sectarian

Adjective
comparativemore sectarian
superlativemost sectarian
Noun
pluralsectarians

Origin of sectarian

From Medieval Latin sectarius + -an. Its corresponding etymology per the first sense is sect + -arian.

Words formed from sectarian

Words that rhyme with sectarian

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sectarian

What does sectarian mean?
Sectarian means of, relating to, or partial to a sect.
What is sectarian in Hindi?
Sectarian in Hindi is संप्रदायवादी. See Sectarian meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is sectarian?
Sectarian can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce sectarian?
Sectarian is pronounced /sɛkˈtɛəɹi.ən/ (UK).

Words near sectarian in the dictionary

  1. Sect People
  2. sect.
  3. sectant
  4. sectants
  5. sectarial
  6. sectarian
  7. sectarianise
  8. sectarianised
  9. sectarianises
  10. sectarianising
  11. sectarianism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sectarian (page history and authors); sectarian (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sectarian (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); مذہبی (Urdu) (page history and authors); sectarian (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sectarian (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); sectarian (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sectarian (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sectarian (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-sectarian.ogg, en-au-sectarian.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sectarian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sectarian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.