Secular

The word secular traces its origin back to Latin, where the word saeculum meant a long period of time, or an epoch, or an age.

Actually, it started out meaning one idealized Roman lifespan, or about a century. This was a useful measure of time for thinking about Rome itself. Scholars could speak in terms of Rome’s transition from a monarchy to a republic over a handful of these saecula, and it was useful to understand that the lifespan of a nation could be far, far longer than that of a human.

Over the centuries, as Christianity spread through the Roman empire, this word’s meaning inverted and became more akin to the opposite of what it had meant previously. Religious scholars wanted to differentiate between things that were forever, not bound by timespans that humans were bound by.

A saeculum was suddenly very short by comparison to eternity. Gradually, a distinction formed between things that were “of this world” and things that supposedly were not. Secular fit the bill nicely for this since the meaning was already diverging away from time, where it started its Roman origin story.

What had previously meant a very long time now meant a relatively short time by comparison, and secular’s modern meaning began to creep into existence. It wasn’t necessarily anti-religious, but a firm line was drawn for this separate realm for God (or the gods).

You even had secular and regular clergy during the middle ages in Europe. Secular clergy would be parish priests who lived among non-church folks and the like, while the regular clergy (regular means following a set of regulations in this case) lived cloistered lives apart from the rest of society.

While the religious-or-not distinction became common, the original time-measuring version of secular also stuck around.

Ever hear economists or finance people talking about a secular shift? They’re talking about a trend that plays out over a longer period of time, like how the internet shifted everyone’s spending habits forever over the span of a couple of decades. This is really different from a cyclical downturn you can expect every few years in any market-based system.

Secular stagnation is another favorite for politicians who want to impress business leaders. Like a secular shift, secular stagnation indicates a very long period of sustained slower growth. It’s not necessarily a recession, but more like long-term drag.

Astronomers, too, will use the word secular to indicate very long time periods. When they use secular variation to describe the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, for instance, they’re talking about changes that unfold over the centuries. This helps to contrast the much more temporary fluctuations that take place.

So, just to be clear: secular started out as a word that meant a very long time. Gradually, it morphed into a word that means a relatively short time (as compared to forever), but it also retained its original meaning along a parallel track.