sect
An offshoot of a larger religion or denomination.
Noun
- An offshoot of a larger religion or denomination.
- a religious sect
- A group following a specific ideal or a leader.
- Zen Center welcomes visitors, guests, and prospective students, but it does not engage in systematic institutional or network recruiting of new members, unlike the Christian sect and Erhard Seminars Training. - 1984,...
- Every person who is not a fellow member, and every social, religious and political institution that lies outside the sect's domain, is portrayed as a representative of Satan's world. In our research, we found that...
- Peoples Temple and the Branch Davidians both approximated the 'apocalyptic sect' as an ideal type. In such sects the end of the world is taken as a central tenet. - 1995, Stuart A. Wright, Armageddon in Waco: Critical...
- A cutting; a scion.
Origin
From Middle English secte, from Old French secte (“a sect in philosophy or religion”), from Late Latin secta (“a sect in philosophy or religion, a school, party, faction, class, guild, band, particularly a heretical doctrine or sect, etc.”), possibly, from Latin sequi (“to follow”). Alternatively linked to sectus (“cut off, divided”), past participle of secō.
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Noun astrology, human sciences
- An ancient astrological concept, a form of polarity by which heavenly bodies were designated as either diurnal or nocturnal.