Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use secular in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Secular means not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical. Example: “The secular games of ancient Rome were held to mark the end of a saeculum and the beginning of the next.”

Examples of secular by meaning

adjectiveNot bound by the vows of a religious order.

  • secular clergy in Catholicism

adjectiveHappening once in an age or century.

  • The secular games of ancient Rome were held to mark the end of a saeculum and the beginning of the next.

adjectiveContinuing over a long period of time.

  • The long-term growth in population and income accounts for most secular trends in economic phenomena.
  • on a secular basis
  • The skewed distribution of productivity gains is thus less a new phenomenon than a secular trend.2006, “Economics focus: Dividing the pie”, in The Economist

More sentences with secular

  • Haredi Judaism is a stream of Orthodox Judaism characterized by rejection of modern secular culture.From the entry stream
  • The couple chose to solemnize their relationship in a secular ceremony, instead of having a wedding.From the entry solemnize
  • The cardinalate ranks equal to a secular prince of the blood.From the entry cardinalate
  • Fascism and communism are often described as secular religions.From the entry secular religion
  • Her theory posits that secular religions will rush in to fill the cultural void left by the decline of religiosity.From the entry secular religion
  • Secular humanism and Confucianism are eupraxophies.From the entry eupraxophy
  • The secular arm as a means by which lay power intervenes in ecclesiastical cases had two types: sought and unsought by the Church.From the entry secular arm
  • Unfortunately, unlike “secular Jew” or “cultural Jew”, the term “cultural Muslim” isn’t widely understood.2020 July 6, Kia Abdullah, The i Paper. From the entry Muslim
  • Collectively, religion, the secular, the superstition form what Josephson has called a "trinary" of mutually constitutive forces.2019 March 25, Jolyon Baraka Thomas, Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN…. From the entry trinary
  • The bulge exhibits cylindrical rotation consistent with a disky origin which evolved through bar driven secular evolution.2016, Carine Babusiaux, “Correlations between kinematics and metallicity in the Galactic bulge: a review”, in arXiv. From the entry disky
  • It is a small bell used for both religious and secular music of the orthodox Ethiopian Christian.2013, Tudor Parfitt, Emanuela Trevisan Semi, editors, The Jews of Ethiopia: The Birth of an Elite, Routledge, page ??. From the entry qachel
  • Secular Jews like fine food just as much as religious Jews.2006, Morris Alexander, translated by Barnett Zumoff, “A Secular Table of the Laws”, in Barnett Zumoff, Karl D. Zukerman, editors, Secular…. From the entry kreplekh
  • His climb-down from the "hard, secular" image was mainly to widen his support base.2003 September 27, “Mulyam shows his ‘secular’ face again, hits out at BJP”, in India Times, retrieved 30 Jun 2011. From the entry climb down
  • The secular absolutist model is based on a strict separation between church and state.2001, Ayelet Shachar, Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women's Rights, page 72. From the entry church
  • The inner rhason corresponds to the cassock and, like it, is used by the secular clergy.1998, Encyclopaedia Britannica CD 98 Multimedia Edition. From the entry rhason
  • They are singing not a religious qawwali but its secular and lay cousin.1997, Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold, HarperCollins, published 2013, page 223. From the entry qawwali
  • Ah, but the virtue of public education, it is said, is that it is secular and non-denominational.1978 December 9, Mitzel, “Post-Briggs Blues”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 20, page 5. From the entry disestablish
  • Many of the housemates had Jewish ancestry, but in lieu of Shabbos prayers they had invented their own secular rituals.2024 March 18, Andrew Marantz, “О.К., Doomer”, in The New Yorker, page 51. From the entry shabbos
  • The Super Bowl, the biggest TV show of the year, became a secular holiday gathering that rivals Christmas.2023 July 10, James Poniewozik, “The Twitter Watch Party Is Over”, in The New York Times. From the entry water cooler effect
  • The Browns’ experiences are striking because they operate in one of the most antisupernaturalist subcultures in the modern world: secular academia.2022 December 24, Molly Worthen, “How Would You Prove That God Performed a Miracle?”, in The New York Times. From the entry anti-supernaturalist
  • As some might put it: a secular atheocracy.2012 February 22, Robert Joustra, “Beware the secular atheocracy”, in The Globe and Mail. From the entry atheocracy
  • It's possible to have a contemporary version of (secular) anachoresis.2012, Roland Barthes, How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces, →ISBN. From the entry anachoresis
  • After the trials, Turkey's secular elite was completely vitiated.2011 September 2, Dexter Filkins, “Turkey's Thirty-Year Coup”, in The New Yorker. From the entry vitiate
  • Secular distribution of biogenic silica through the phanerozoic: comparison of silica-replaced fossils and bedded cherts at the series level .2009 January 8, Daniel L. Rabosky, Ulf Sorhannus, “Diversity dynamics of marine planktonic diatoms across the Cenozoic”, in Nature, volume…. From the entry phanerozoic
  • Was this to be a strictly secular or non-secular institution?2006, Angarai Venkataraman Balasubramanian, T. D. Nirmala Devi, Traditional knowledge systems of India and Sri Lanka. From the entry pluriversity
  • Wars of democracy have tended to become wars to the knife; as a modern secular religion, democracy requires unconditional surrender.2003, Andrew Roberts, Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, →ISBN, pages xxv–xxvi. From the entry war to the knife
  • The religiouslike qualities of this love were no accident; they were deliberately signaled by many advice writers, evangelical and secular alike.1994, American Cool - Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style, page 35. From the entry religiouslike
  • Contemporary Islamic countries are an interesting example of how handism, as expressed in religious traditions, can also influence more secular activities.1993, Stanley Coren, The left-hander syndrome. From the entry handism
  • All princes, ecclesiastical and secular, machiavellized (80-8 1).1992, Nancy S. Struever, Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the Renaissance, page 212. From the entry machiavellize
  • Originally an official of the medieval European ecclesiastical courts, the notary developed into a noncontentious secular legal professional in France.1985, Morris Arnold, Unequal Laws Unto a Savage Race: European Legal Traditions in Arkansas, page 19. From the entry notary
  • The third type of secular Bar Mitzvah was developed by secular Yiddishists in the United States before and after World War II.2024, David Golinkin, “The Origin and History of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Ceremony”, in Responsa in a Moment, volume 4, page 57. From the entry Yiddishist
  • The second part of the premise, which claims that calls for a secular Iran continue to foster the cause of Western imperialism, seems unfounded.2023 November 6, Hossein Dabbagh, Patrick Hassan, “Secularism in Iran”, in aeon, archived from the original on 18 Nov 2023. From the entry criterial
  • Secular palaces, such as that of the Tolomei, were rented for municipal use, and officials such as the Podestà were found lodgings in others.2022, Jane Stevenson, Siena, Head of Zeus, p. 65. From the entry podesta
  • The Baath is an avowedly secular party that has pursued socialist economic policies and at one time was aligned with the "godless" Soviet Union.2012, William Mark Habeeb, The Middle East in Turmoil, page 185. From the entry Baath
  • Millard’s sketch happened to look a lot like the master plan of Fourierism, one of the most popular secular utopian movements in American history.2009 April 16, Jon Mooallem, “The End Is Near! (Yay!)”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry Fourierism

Meaning of secular

  1. adjective Not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical.
  2. adjective Temporal; worldly, or otherwise not based on something timeless.
  3. adjective Not bound by the vows of a religious order.

Full definition of secular

Questions about secular in a sentence

How do you use secular in a sentence?
Secular is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “The secular games of ancient Rome were held to mark the end of a saeculum and the beginning of the next.”
What is a short sentence with secular?
“on a secular basis”
What does secular mean?
Secular means not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: secular (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use secular in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/secular. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.