laical

variants or laic
Definition of laicalnext

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for laical
Adjective
  • And even the irreligious Bill de Blasio would join parishioners at the cathedral.
    New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 9 Feb. 2026
  • 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
Adjective
  • Assad, a member of the Alawite religious minority, officially espoused a secular ideology.
    ABC News, ABC News, 16 Feb. 2026
  • But when many people within liberal societies do not feel that the system is working, when the practical case for liberalism comes into question, secular liberals don’t have much else to go on.
    Christopher Beha, New Yorker, 14 Feb. 2026
Adjective
  • Yet, even as Aleys’s world begins to change with the rise of lay literacy, those lay people are almost entirely men.
    Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 5 Feb. 2026
  • Both memoirs prepare the lay gambler for a world of gruelling, bruising defeats and unglamorous back-of-the-envelope calculus.
    Dan Piepenbring, New Yorker, 4 Feb. 2026
Adjective
  • Groundhog Day is its pagan echo — a reading of light and shadow, an old way of guessing at spring.
    Ana Gutierrez, Austin American Statesman, 3 Feb. 2026
  • Over the course of that months-long reporting, a picture has emerged of the radical characters involved with the property, including a notorious neo-Nazi family and a pagan mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter.
    Rob Picheta, CNN Money, 15 Dec. 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
  • Elevation Church, the evangelical, nondenominational megachurch led by Pastor Steven Furtick, recently announced its plan to start its own college program in 2026.
    Briah Lumpkins, Charlotte Observer, 18 Dec. 2025
  • Morris, who founded the nondenominational Gateway Church in Texas, pleaded guilty in October to five felony counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with all but six months suspended.
    Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC news, 17 Dec. 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
  • For the launch colorway, a vivid graphic may initially bring to mind heat maps with its application of blue, green, yellow and red — but the choice was actually made to invoke a temporal fold, a theoretical concept of bending spacetime to move faster than the speed of light.
    Ian Servantes, Footwear News, 13 Feb. 2026
  • This temporal displacement has consequences.
    Michael Paarlberg, The Conversation, 12 Feb. 2026
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 21 Feb. 2026.

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!