secular

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• adjective Worldly rather than spiritual.
• adjective Not relating to religion or to a religious body; nonreligious.
• adjective Not bound by the full monastic rule of a religious order. Used of clergy.
• adjective Relating to or advocating secularism.
• adjective Occurring or observed once in an age or century, as games in ancient Rome.
• adjective Lasting or persisting for a long time.
• adjective Astronomy Of or relating to characteristics of astronomical phenomena that change slowly over time.
• noun A member of the secular clergy.
• noun A layperson.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Celebrated or occurring once in an age or a century.
• Going on from age to age; accomplished or taking place in the course of ages; continued through an indefinite but long period of time; not recurrent or periodical, so far as known: as, secular change of the mean annual temperature; the secular cooling or refrigeration of the globe; the secular inequality in the motion of a planet.
• Living for an age or ages; permanent.
• Of or pertaining to the things of time or of this world, and dissociated from or having no concern with religious, spiritual, or sacred matters or uses; connected with or relating to the world or its affairs; concerned with mundane or temporal matters; temporal; worldly; profane: as. secular affairs; the secular press; secular education; secular music.
• Lay, as opposed to clerical; civil. See def. 4.
• Living in the world, not in the cloister; hence, not bound by monastic vows or rules, nor subject to a monastic order: used especially of parish priests and other non-monastic clergy, as distinguished from the monastic or regular clergy.
• Synonyms Temporal, etc. see worldly.
• noun l. A layman.
• noun An ecclesiastic, such as a parish priest, who lives in the world and not in a monastery, is not subject to any monastic order or rule, and is bound only to celibacy; a secular priest: opposed to religious or regular.
• noun An unordained church officer.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• adjective Coming or observed once in an age or a century.
• adjective Pertaining to an age, or the progress of ages, or to a long period of time; accomplished in a long progress of time.
• adjective Of or pertaining to this present world, or to things not spiritual or holy; relating to temporal as distinguished from eternal interests; not immediately or primarily respecting the soul, but the body; worldly.
• adjective (Eccl.) Not regular; not bound by monastic vows or rules; not confined to a monastery, or subject to the rules of a religious community.
• adjective Belonging to the laity; lay; not clerical.
• adjective (Astron.) the algebraic or numerical expression of the magnitude of the inequalities in a planet's motion that remain after the inequalities of a short period have been allowed for.
• adjective (Rom. Antiq.) games celebrated, at long but irregular intervals, for three days and nights, with sacrifices, theatrical shows, combats, sports, and the like.
• adjective any music or songs not adapted to sacred uses.
• adjective a hymn or poem composed for the secular games, or sung or rehearsed at those games.
• noun (Eccl.) A secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules.
• noun (Eccl.) A church official whose functions are confined to the vocal department of the choir.
• noun A layman, as distinguished from a clergyman.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• adjective Not specifically religious.
• adjective Temporal; something that is worldly or otherwise not based on something timeless.
• adjective Christianity Not bound by the vows of a monastic order.
• adjective Happening once in an age or century.
• adjective Continuing over a long period of time, long-term.
• adjective literary Centuries-old, ancient.
• adjective astrophysics Of or pertaining to long-term non-periodic irregularities, especially in planetary motion.
• adjective atomic physics Unperturbed over time.
• noun A secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules.
• noun A church official whose functions are confined to the vocal department of the choir.
• noun A layman, as distinguished from a clergyman.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• adjective of or relating to clergy not bound by monastic vows
• adjective not concerned with or devoted to religion
• adjective characteristic of or devoted to the temporal world as opposed to the spiritual world
• adjective characteristic of those who are not members of the clergy
• noun someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person