Both Uses
secular
in
The Road, by McCarthy
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- They were crossing the broad coastal plain where the secular winds drove them in howling clouds of ash to find shelter where they could.†
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- The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular.†
Definitions:
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(1)
(secular as in: a secular organization) not religious
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(2)
(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.