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sectarianism

noun

Simple meaning

A narrow-minded adherence to a particular sect or party or denomination.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

sehktehreeuhnihzuhm

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

sɛkˈtɛɹiənɪzəm

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A narrow-minded adherence to a particular sect or party or denomination

  2. Rigid adherence to a particular sect, denomination, ideology, or party.

  3. politics

    A political system in which power is shared among religious sects based on a constitutional formula distributing public offices among these sects.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Rare
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A narrow-minded adherence to a particular sect or party or denomination

Used this way, sectarianism is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • denominationalism , rarer, so it draws attention

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use sectarianism

  • “He condemned religious sectarianism.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Narrow / rigid

narrow sectarianism

Political

religious sectarianism

Other combinations

political sectarianismjewish sectarianismprotestant sectarianism

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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: narrow-minded adherence to a particular sect or party

denominationalismRare

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.