Sect

How to spell sect

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sect

What does sect mean?

1. nounA group of people with distinct religious, political, or philosophical beliefs that have broken away from a larger body.

Sect in a sentence

• The small sect met every week in a rented hall on the edge of town.

• Members of the sect followed a strict set of rules about diet and dress.

Where does sect come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin secta, which meant a way of life, a course of action, or a school of thought, and by extension a political or philosophical faction. Roman writers used it for the group of people who followed a particular leader or doctrine, and the noun is generally traced to sequi, meaning 'to follow', so a sect was literally the band of those who followed someone. English picked it up in the 1300s through Old French secte, applying it especially to dissenting religious groups that had broken away from a larger church. The same Latin family gives us words like 'sequence' and 'sequel', all carrying the idea of following on. The compact spelling, just one syllable ending in the cluster -ct, is what trips writers up, since the hard 'k' sound is carried by the letter c rather than a k.

How the word is built

• sect (from Latin secta: a faction, a school of thought, literally a following)