secularize
Americanverb (used with object)
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secularizes,
present (3rd person singular)
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secularized,
past participle, past
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secularizing
present participle
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to make secular; separate from religious or spiritual connection or influences; make worldly or unspiritual; imbue with secularism.
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to change (clergy) from regular to secular.
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to transfer (property) from ecclesiastical to civil possession or use.
verb
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to change from religious or sacred to secular functions, etc
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to dispense from allegiance to a religious order
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law to transfer (property) from ecclesiastical to civil possession or use
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English legal history to transfer (an offender) from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts to that of the civil courts for the imposition of a more severe punishment
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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secularizesimple
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secularizessimple
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have secularizedperfect
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has secularizedperfect
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am secularizingprogressive
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are secularizingprogressive
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is secularizingprogressive
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have been secularizingperfect progressive
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has been secularizingperfect progressive
Past
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secularizedsimple
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had secularizedperfect
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was secularizingprogressive
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were secularizingprogressive
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had been secularizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of secularize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In 2019, he was elected to Israel’s governing body, the Knesset, as a member of the Balad party, an Arab party that strives to secularize Israel.
From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2023
He contends that it will help secularize a province in which the Catholic Church long exerted outsize sway.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 19, 2021
In what direction have they taken their cultural quest to secularize the world?
From Salon ● Jun. 5, 2021
In the 1920s, the Mexican government’s attempt to secularize the country sparks a rebellion known as the Cristero War.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2020
But the acts of the legislature, which passed laws to prevent arbitrary action by the executive and to secularize education, so exasperated the old soldier that he finally resigned from his high office.
From A History of the Nations and Empires Involved and a Study of the Events Culminating in the Great Conflict by Logan Marshall
Whatever mix best secularizes the value of a given bundle.
From New York Times ● Jul. 11, 2016
Doctorow simply secularizes that prophecy into supine universal unconcern, ecological devastation and the nuclear holocaust.
From Time Magazine Archive
Pious Muslims came in the 1920s, leaving Iran as the shah secularized the nation, including banning the headscarf.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026
Hospitals were secularized, orphanages and parish schools closed or often transformed into prep schools for rich kids causing the Church to relinquish much of its relevancy in the daily lives of Catholics.
From Salon ● Aug. 18, 2024
“You could make the argument that it … in the secularized form over the centuries becomes just a general principle that the morally correct person is somebody who doesn’t waste their time.”
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 15, 2024
He was candid in conceding a decline of faith in the increasingly secularized developed world.
From New York Times ● Dec. 31, 2022
In return for this was unity of faith and a Church which had been hardened and vitiated and secularized in the strife.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume II by Henry Charles Lea
This was followed by a period of top-down secularizing reforms under the military officer-turned-king Reza Shah, who banned the wearing of the veil in public in the 1930s.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 27, 2022
It became a global juggernaut at a time when religion was struggling in a secularizing Europe and North America.
From New York Times ● Jan. 30, 2022
“I wouldn’t say he had an interest in secularizing it,” Duncan said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 28, 2022
“The secularizing shifts evident in American society so far in the 21st-century show no signs of slowing,” wrote Gregory A. Smith, Pew’s associate director of research.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 14, 2021
The moralization of the world has, as a matter of historic fact, kept pace with the secularizing of life.
From A Grammar of Freethought by Chapman Cohen
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
