Both Uses of
secular
in
Middlemarch
- But it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the more difficult task:—what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an "appointment") which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?†
Chpt 6
- I have a dreadfully secular mind.†
Chpt 6 *
Definitions:
-
(1)
(secular as in: a secular organization) not religious
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, secular means not a member of the clergy or not belonging to a specific religious order.
Also rarely, secular can reference long time spans in various senses such as:- a one-time rather than a cyclical event -- such as "a secular decrease in real estate prices" or "a secular rather than a periodic planetary perturbation"
- a once-in-an-age or once per century event -- such as "The Secular Games of Rome"
In physics, secular equilibrium refers to a state where a radioactive isotope decays at the same rate at which it is produced.