laical

variants or laic

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for laical
Adjective
  • Stewart’s switch from his usual snark to imitate Colbert’s buffoonery proved how spiteful and irreligious political humor has become since the left’s worship of Barack Obama and subsequent persecution of President Trump.
    Armond White, National Review, 25 July 2025
  • Silverstein had a much different experience growing up, given the fact that his parents were both Baalei teshuva (irreligious Jews who become more observant later in life).
    Josh Weiss, Forbes.com, 11 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • That later became the foundational precedent for centuries of papal claims to secular authority over the papal states of the Romagna.
    JSTOR Daily, JSTOR Daily, 16 Oct. 2025
  • By this time, however, Hamas had already begun to eclipse secular rivals in popularity and Palestinian elections held in 2006 led to a victory for the Islamist militant group, sparking clashes with the PA's leading Fatah faction and Hamas' eventual takeover of the territory the following year.
    Tom O'Connor, MSNBC Newsweek, 14 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Delbarton publicly acknowledged in 2018 that at least 30 men had come forward with allegations that, over three decades, 13 past or current priests and monks at the school had victimized them — in addition to a lay faculty member who is now retired.
    Corky Siemaszko, NBC news, 16 Oct. 2025
  • The meaning is not something that a lay person can necessarily intuit.
    John E. Jones III, The Conversation, 5 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • When a rigid, devoutly Christian cop (Edward Woodward) arrives in search of a missing girl, he's horrified by the island's embrace of pagan rituals.
    Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 18 Oct. 2025
  • This pagan tradition took place on October 31 when the Celts believed the veil between the physical world and the spirit realm was thinnest, with ceremonial fires and rituals taking place to mark the conclusion of one pastoral year, and the entry into the next.
    Nicole Kliest, Vogue, 18 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • His stories, particularly the later ones, center around the idea that the Universe is a godless cosmos that is entirely indifferent to humanity.
    Big Think, Big Think, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Predictably, the hubbub surrounding the photo was eventually framed as a war between uptight virgins and godless heathens, with a quieter contingent astounded only by the fact that this kind of marketing could still be so effective.
    Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • Trenton Stewart Stewart was an employee with AES, a firefighter in Waverly and a pastor at a small nondenominational church in the same town called The Log Church, according to his Facebook page.
    Abigail Adams, PEOPLE, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Lannie Tucker from Celebration Community Church, a nondenominational congregation in Fort Worth, helped direct traffic in the parking lot.
    Harriet Ramos, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 6 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Most of the scholars Wiese discusses were rabbis, whether more traditional ones or proponents of radical reform, and this reflects the degree to which secular Jewish Studies, housed in nonsectarian universities, took longer to develop.
    Josh Lambert, JSTOR Daily, 19 Sep. 2025
  • The Dalai Lama’s nonsectarian vision and unifying presence has helped Tibetans in exile avoid the fate of many diaspora communities that fall apart from internal strife, tribal loyalties, and turf wars.
    Tenzin Dorjee, Foreign Affairs, 1 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • This temporal displacement frees Pynchon to offer sidelong commentary on contemporary politics without getting trapped in the flux of the present or being too on the nose.
    Jack Denton, Vulture, 6 Oct. 2025
  • To practice ‘future temporal focused’ networking, create a timetable and ask yourself key questions.
    Sarah Maokosy, Fortune, 4 Oct. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Laical.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/laical. Accessed 22 Oct. 2025.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!