Word.ws English Dictionary

sectary

sectary noun: a member of a particular sect, school of thought or practice, party, or profession; a sectarian.

Noun

sectary (plural sectaries)

  1. A member of a particular sect, school of thought or practice, party, or profession; a sectarian.
    • Be it as it may: within the Land of Penn / The sectary yielded to the citizen, / And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded men.1872, John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Pennsylvania Pilgrim”, in The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, and Other Poems, Boston, Mass.: James R. Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co....
    • It is this spirit which inspires sectaries to deprecate the public schools and, if they cannot divert part of the tax support, then to foist upon this free system the shadow of their own beclouded vision.1953, T.V. Smith, “Democratic Apologetics” in Ethics LXIII, № 2 (January 1953), page 106, left column
  2. A Protestant dissenter or nonconformist.

Forms of sectary

pluralsectaries

Origin of sectary

Either from the French sectaire or directly from its etymon, the Medieval Latin sectārius, from secta (“sect”). Cognates include the Italian settario and the Portuguese and Spanish sectario.

Questions about sectary

What does sectary mean?
Sectary means a member of a particular sect, school of thought or practice, party, or profession; a sectarian.
What part of speech is sectary?
Sectary is a noun.
What is the plural of sectary?
The plural of sectary is sectaries.

Words near sectary in the dictionary

  1. sectaries
  2. sectarism
  3. sectarisms
  4. sectarist
  5. sectarists
  6. sectary
  7. sectator
  8. sectators
  9. sectile
  10. sectility
  11. secting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sectary (page history and authors). 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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Cite this entry: “sectary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sectary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.