as in temporal
not involving religion or religious matters
that's an issue for the secular authorities, not the church
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Recent Examples of secular
Eliza Griswold,
New Yorker,
22 June 2026
During the 16th century’s Protestant Reformation, celebrations of Catholic saints’ feast days were suppressed, but Midsummer lived on as a secular holiday.
—
Thomas A. Dubois,
The Conversation,
17 June 2026
Culture Critic,
Los Angeles Times,
8 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for secular
Adjective
Seven Mountains has brought the language of spiritual warfare and demon-fighting into the mainstream of evangelicalism, through a network of pastors who view themselves as prophets and apostles engaged in a battle against evil secular forces.
—
Eliza Griswold,
New Yorker,
22 June 2026
During the 16th century’s Protestant Reformation, celebrations of Catholic saints’ feast days were suppressed, but Midsummer lived on as a secular holiday.
—
Thomas A. Dubois,
The Conversation,
17 June 2026
Noun
The sacred meets the secular in this long-running pairing of a young vicar with a worldly police detective in the titular idyllic Cambridgeshire village during the 1950s and ‘60s.
—
Culture Critic,
Los Angeles Times,
8 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for secular
Recent Examples of Synonyms for secular
Adjective
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Though editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis (a Yorgos Lanthimos regular) cuts the film with brisk concision, there’s also a welcome temporal elasticity here — the sense that life can change in the blink of an eye, but also stall for undefined passages.
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The researchers fed this millennium-long data into a computer model to determine how much stress has built up along the faults in that temporal window.
Noun
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Although made for a range of sports instead of boating, the Champion launched as Keds’ first shoe in 1916, and the layman would have a hard time telling it apart from the Authentic with nearly identical stitching forming its upper.
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In the United States, the layman can do this any day of the week, especially Saturday, if the weather is nice.
Adjective
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Florida statutes creating the charter school framework also require those schools to be nonreligious.
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Republicans vow to appeal Arkansas ruling Last year, seven Arkansas families of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s new law requiring all public elementary and secondary schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom and library.
Noun
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These creators are savvy online marketers who can dizzy a layperson with complex discussions of ROI, content stream diversification and fan-intake funnels.
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Wilding’s evidence seems obvious in hindsight, even to a layperson.
Cite this Entry
“Secular.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/secular. Accessed 3 Jul. 2026.
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