secular

Etymology

From Middle English seculer, from Old French seculer, from Latin saeculāris (“of the age”), from saeculum.

adj

1. Not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical.
2. Temporal; worldly, or otherwise not based on something timeless.
3. (Christianity) Not bound by the vows of a monastic order.
   secular clergy in Catholicism
4. Happening once in an age or century.
   The secular games of ancient Rome were held to mark the end of a saeculum and the beginning of the next.
5. Continuing over a long period of time, long-term.
   The long-term growth in population and income accounts for most secular trends in economic phenomena.
   on a secular basis
   In this event, the sϕ(k) curve in Fig. 15.5 will be subject to a secular upward shift, resulting in successively higher intersections with the λk ray and also in larger values of ̄k. 2005, Alpha Chiang and Kevin Wainwright, Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics (4th ed.), McGraw-Hill International, p. 501
   The skewed distribution of productivity gains is thus less a new phenomenon than a secular trend. 2006, “Economics focus: Dividing the pie”, in The Economist
6. (literary) Centuries-old, ancient.
7. (astrophysics, geology) Relating to long-term non-periodic irregularities, especially in planetary motion or magnetic field.
   Laplace (1749–1827) "saved the world" by using probability theory to estimate the parameters accurately enough to show that the drift of Jupiter was not secular after all; the observations at hand had covered only a fraction of a cycle of an oscillation with a period of about 880 years. 2003, E. T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, Cambridge University Press, pages 234–235
8. (atomic physics) Unperturbed over time.
   The secular A and nonsecular B parts of hyperfine interaction for any particular frequencies ν_α and ν_β are derived from eqn.(21) by ... 2000, S. A. Dikanov, Two-dimensional ESEEM Spectroscopy, in New Advances in Analytical Chemistry (Atta-ur-Rahman, ed.), page 539

noun

1. A secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules.
2. A church official whose functions are confined to the vocal department of the choir.
3. A layman, as distinguished from a clergyman.