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sect
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
sect
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
different
▪ Gainsborough had 3 banks, several schools, and places of worship for Anglicans, Catholics and 6 different dissenting sects.
▪ One might almost say that each of the different sects corresponds to a different social group or class.
▪ Their religious life is tolerant, pluralist, divided into different sects or denominations.
religious
▪ Paramat stood by the doorway with the attitude of a tourist at the shrine of an exotic religious sect.
▪ Behind the gate, however, is a religious sect that former members say indulges in polygamy and other questionable practices.
▪ He believes Dinah has either been murdered or is the prisoner of a religious sect.
▪ As these opportunities appeared, so at the same time the lines of religious party and sect hardened.
▪ It must be stressed that the Zealots were not a religious sect or denomination.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a fundamentalist sect
▪ A monk named Kashyapa is regarded as the founder of the Zen sect of Buddhism.
▪ Islam has two main sects: the Sunnis and the Shias.
▪ She is a member of a religious sect that was formed from various aspects of Asian religions.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All the others were from the sect hierarchy's lesser rank of Disciples.
▪ He believes Dinah has either been murdered or is the prisoner of a religious sect.
▪ Many Kharijite sects advocated anarchy as a solution; getting rid of the leader came to be an acceptable tactic.
▪ My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right....
▪ One classificatory device that has been used frequently draws distinctions between church, denomination, and sect and cult.
▪ One might almost say that each of the different sects corresponds to a different social group or class.
▪ Shinto sanctuaries came under the control of this new sect, known also as Dualist Shintoism.
▪ This well-known story from Marco Polo's account dates from two hundred years after the sect had been crushed.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sect

Sect \Sect\ (s[e^]kt), n. [L. secare, sectum, to cut.] A cutting; a scion. [Obs.]
--Shak.

Sect

Sect \Sect\ (s[e^]kt), n. [F. secte, L. secta, fr. sequi to follow; often confused with L. secare, sectum, to cut. See Sue to follow, and cf. Sept, Suit, n.] Those following a particular leader or authority, or attached to a certain opinion; a company or set having a common belief or allegiance distinct from others; in religion, the believers in a particular creed, or upholders of a particular practice; especially, in modern times, a party dissenting from an established church; a denomination; in philosophy, the disciples of a particular master; a school; in society and the state, an order, rank, class, or party.

He beareth the sign of poverty, And in that sect our Savior saved all mankind.
--Piers Plowman.

As of the sect of which that he was born, He kept his lay, to which that he was sworn.
--Chaucer.

The cursed sect of that detestable and false prophet Mohammed.
--Fabyan.

As concerning this sect [Christians], we know that everywhere it is spoken against.
--Acts xxviii. 22.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sect

mid-14c., "distinctive system of beliefs or observances; party or school within a religion," from Old French secte, sete "sect, religious community," or directly from Late Latin secta "religious group, sect in philosophy or religion," from Latin secta "manner, mode, following, school of thought," literally "a way, road, beaten path," from fem. of sectus, variant past participle of sequi "follow," from PIE *sekw- (1) "to follow" (see sequel). Confused in this sense with Latin secta, fem. past participle of secare "to cut" (see section (n.)). Meaning "separately organized religious body" is recorded from 1570s.

Wiktionary
sect

n. 1 An offshoot of a larger religion; a group sharing particular (often unorthodox) political and/or religious beliefs. 2 A group following a specific ideal or a leader. 3 (context obsolete English) A cutting; a scion.

WordNet
sect

  1. n. a subdivision of a larger religious group [syn: religious sect, religious order]

  2. a dissenting clique [syn: faction]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Sect (Canadian band)

Sect was a Vancouver, Canada industrial trance band, comprising Michael Victory, Jason McEvoy and Bruce Young. Sect released a single album and were represented on a handful of Dossier compilations from 1993 to 1995.

Sect (Brazilian band)

Sect was a Brazilian dance-pop band, formed in 1994, consisting of producers Tchorta, Gui Boratto and Patrícia Coelho as lead vocalist.

In 1998 Patrícia Coelho was replaced by the new vocalist, Alyssa.

Follow You, released in 1995, from the album Eleven is their biggest success and reached no. 1 in several countries.

The song was later included on História de Amor original soundtrack, a Brazilian soap opera.

Sect (disambiguation)

A sect is a subgroup of a religious, political or philosophical belief system. It may also refer to:

  • Astrology of sect, an ancient astrological concept
  • Subepithelial connective tissue graft, also referred as SECT graft
Sect

A sect is a subgroup of a religious, political or philosophical belief system, usually an offshoot of a larger religious group. Although it used to be mostly used to refer to religious groups, it can now refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and principles. The term is occasionally used in a malicious way to suggest the broken-off group follows a more negative path than the original.

The historical usage of the term sect in Christendom has had pejorative connotations and refers to a group or movement with heretical beliefs or practices that deviate from those of groups considered orthodox.

A sect, in an Indian context, refers to an organized tradition.

Usage examples of "sect".

Somewhat to the left of the Antitrinitarian sects were a few men, who had hardly any followers, who may be called, for want of a better term, Spiritual Reformers.

Ranging the continent literally from Georgia to Maine, with all his weaknesses and indiscretions, and with his incomparable eloquence, welcomed by every sect, yet refusing an exclusive allegiance to any, Whitefield exercised a true apostolate, bearing daily the care of all the churches, and becoming a messenger of mutual fellowship not only between the ends of the continent, but between the Christians of two hemispheres.

Great Schism in 1749, at the end of the War of the Faces, there were fifty Architect sects.

Knife, one of the most strident laymen in that somewhat eccentric and quivering and fundamentalist sect, the Antinomian Church.

Ori Lavin, normally a calm, pragmatic Pelorist, almost a caricature of that sect, had reacted to Bilong as if to a shot of rejuvenating hormones, and sleeked his moustache every time she undulated by.

Krishna are the most light-hearted and blithesome of all the Hindu sects.

In contrast to most of the new religions, which are highly syncretic, it shares the exclusivism and intolerance of other religious sects that have always been the hallmarks of Nichiren Buddhism.

We should, while endeavoring to uphold loyally and expound conscientiously our social and moral principles in all their essence and purity, in all their bearings upon the divers phases of human society, insure that no direct reference or particular criticism in our exposition of the fundamentals of the Faith would tend to antagonize any existing institution, or help to identify a purely spiritual movement with the base clamorings and contentions of warring sects, factions and nations.

Indian religious sect came to the notice of Count de Maistre, the Jesuit, between 1803 and 1817, and aroused his interest, probably because he thought it might benefit the Society of Jesus.

These two groups of sects, however, agree perfectly with the ancient orthodox Brahmans in accepting the fundamental dogma of a judicial metempsychosis, wherein each one is fastened by his acts and compelled to experience the uttermost consequences of his merit or demerit.

Lord Pastern, three years after their marriage, became an adherent of a sect that practised baptism by total immersion.

If the leading theologians of Christendom, such as Anselm, Calvin, and Grotius, have so thoroughly repudiated the original Christian and patristic doctrine of the atonement, and built another doctrine upon their own uninspired speculations, why should our modern sects defer so slavishly to them, and, instead of freely investigating the subject for themselves from the first sources of Scripture and spiritual philosophy, timidly cling to the results reached by these biassed, morbid, and over sharp thinkers?

It appears, however, that about forty years afterwards the emperor Valerian was persuaded of the truth of this assertion, since in one of his rescripts he evidently supposes, that senators, Roman knights, and ladies of quality, were engaged in the Christian sect.

Their places of worship are built in a strict, predefined arrangement, which, when connected, forms a picture of Adam Ruhani, the third angel, the symbol of the Khazar princess and her sect of priests.

The king had suffered so much in his reputation by his complaisance to the presbyterians of Scotland, and was so displeased with the conduct of that stubborn sect of religionists, that he thought proper to admit some prelatists into the administration.