variants
or laic
as in irreligious
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for laical
Adjective
-
Finishing off the top 5 is religious flick The Forge with an irreligious weekend take-home of $6.6.—
Bethy Squires,
Vulture,
25 Aug. 2024 -
From its earliest days in the nineteenth century and until the Holocaust, the Orthodox rabbinate in eastern Europe was not enthusiastic about the Zionist movement, which at the time was led by irreligious Jews.—
Elliott Abrams,
Foreign Affairs,
1 July 2011
Adjective
-
This expansion of cooperation in Israel’s energy security with Azerbaijan – a secular state with a Muslim Shi’a majority, builds on over thirty years of cordial relations and joint projects in defense, energy, culture, air transportation, and foreign policy.—
Wesley Alexander Hill,
Forbes,
8 Mar. 2025
-
The book boldly subverts the standard view of Pakistani politics as a contest of dueling binaries, religious and secular, military and civilian.—
Foreign Affairs,
Foreign Affairs,
25 Feb. 2025
Adjective
-
By Jeffrey Kluger January 27, 2025 3:53 PM EST Since COVID-19 first took off, political leaders, infectious disease specialists, and the lay public have debated its origins.—
Jeffrey Kluger,
TIME,
27 Jan. 2025
-
In the December e-mail chain among Riverside’s lay leadership, the city’s public preschool programs again came up as a rationale for shutting down Weekday.—
Jessica Winter,
The New Yorker,
18 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
Allen's defense team aggressively pushed their theory that Odinists, members of a pagan Norse religion hijacked by white nationalists, killed the girls during a sacrificial ritual in the woods.—
Kristine Phillips,
The Indianapolis Star,
13 Nov. 2024
-
There’s a lot of folklore, superstition and myth — pagan elements really, that are folded into how people actually practice religion in Ireland.—
Georg Szalai,
The Hollywood Reporter,
3 Sep. 2019
Adjective
-
Compared with the heavenly bliss promised at the end of Revelation, Byron’s godless planet was bleak stuff indeed.—
Jennifer Szalai,
New York Times,
22 Jan. 2025
-
The personal abjection in McGahern’s novels is best understood as an allegory of social despair, which is in turn allegorical of a godless existence.—
Sam Sacks,
Harper's Magazine,
2 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
But defying that downward spiral are nondenominational evangelicals, a group that’s deeply religious but doesn’t necessarily embrace denominational labels.—
Liam Adams,
USA TODAY,
27 Feb. 2025
-
At the same time, the share of nondenominational Protestants remains small (7% in the new study) but is on the rise (up from roughly 5% in 2007).—
Jennifer Agiesta,
CNN,
26 Feb. 2025
Adjective
-
For decades in California, those dollars have only been permitted to go to schools that are nonsectarian.—
Hannah Fry,
Los Angeles Times,
30 Oct. 2024
-
By the 1970s, however, Christian private schools outnumbered the nonsectarian ones, which inspired political activism among Christian evangelists who had shown little political interest previously.—
Michael Hiltzik,
Los Angeles Times,
23 Oct. 2024
Adjective
-
From there on out, the film takes a couple of major swings in the realm of its timeline — a strange temporal unfurling — as well as the seeming motives behind A.J. and Isaac’s arrival, and Camille’s readiness to host them alongside a friend who clearly needs some alone time.—
Siddhant Adlakha,
Variety,
8 Mar. 2025
-
Scientists had long thought that deciphering those qualities — collectively known as prosody — happened in the superior temporal gyrus, an area of the brain associated with speech perception.—
Paul Smaglik,
Discover Magazine,
3 Mar. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Cite this Entry
“Laical.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/laical. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share