Secular

How to spell secular

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce secular

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does secular mean?

1. adjectiveNot connected with religious or spiritual matters; concerned with the ordinary affairs of the world.
2. adjectiveOccurring or developing slowly over a very long period, especially in economics or finance.

Secular in a sentence

• The country runs a strictly secular system of public education.

• Analysts pointed to a secular decline in newspaper advertising over the decades.

• They wanted a secular ceremony rather than a church wedding.

• The fund manager described a secular shift toward renewable energy.

Where does secular come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin saecularis, an adjective built on saeculum, which originally meant a generation, an age, or a long span of human time, and by extension the world as the place where such generations live out their lives. In the Latin of the early Christian church, saecularis came to mean 'belonging to the world' as opposed to belonging to the spiritual or eternal realm, so it labelled worldly affairs, worldly authorities, and clergy who lived among ordinary people rather than in a monastery. English took the word in through Old French in the 1200s, keeping that contrast between the worldly and the religious. The same saeculum root survives in the phrase 'in saecula saeculorum' (for ever and ever) and gives French 'siecle', meaning a century. The single c and the unstressed -ular ending are the spots that trip writers, since the middle vowel is a faint schwa that gives no clue to its spelling.

How the word is built

• secul- (from Latin saeculum: an age, a generation, the world)
• -ar (adjective suffix)