King James Bible Dictionary

(Gr. hairesis, usually rendered "heresy", Acts 24:14; 1 Chronicles 11:19; Galatians 5:20, etc.), meaning properly "a choice," then "a chosen manner of life," and then "a religious party," as the "sect" of the Sadducees (Acts 5:17), of the Pharisees (15:5), the Nazarenes, i.e., Christians (24:5). It afterwards came to be used in a bad sense, of those holding pernicious error, divergent forms of belief (2 Peter 2:1; Galatians 5:20).

SECT, noun. [Latin Sp. secta; from Latin seco, to cut off, to separate.]

1. A body or number of persons united in tenets, chiefly in philosophy or religion, but constituting a distinct party by holding sentiments different from those of other men. Most sects have originated in a particular person, who taught and propagated some peculiar notions in philosophy or religion, and who is considered to have been its founder. Among the jews, the principal sects were the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. In Greece were the Cynic sect, founded by Antisthenes; and the Academic sect, by Plato. The Academic sect gave birth to the Peripatetic, and a Cynic to the Stoic.

2. A cutting or coin. [Not used.]

SECTA'RIAN, adjective. [Latin secrarius.] Pertaining to a sect or sects; as sectarian principles or prejudices.

SECT'ARIAN, noun. One of a sect; one of a party in religion which has separated itself from the established church, or which holds tenets different from those of the prevailing denomination in a kingdom or state.

SECTA'RIANISM, noun. The disposition to dissent from the established church or predominant religion, and to form new sects.

SECT'ARISM, noun. Sectarianism. [Little used.]

SECT'ARIST, noun. A secretary. [Not much used.]

SECT'ARY, noun.

1. A person who separates from an established church, or from the prevailing denomination of christians; one that belongs to a sect; a dissenter.

2. a follower; a pupil. [Not in use.]

SECTA'TOR, noun. A follower; a disciple; an adherent to a sect. [Not now used.]

SECT'ILE, adjective. [Latin sectilus, from seco, to cut.] A sectile mineral is one that is midway between the briddle and the malleable, as soapstone and plumbago.

SEC'TION, noun [L. sectio; seco, to cut off.]

1. The act of cutting or of separating by cutting; as the section of the bodies.

2. A part separated from the rest; a division.

3. In books and writings, a distinct part or portion; the subdivision of a chapter; the division of a law or other writing or instrument. In laws, a section is sometimes called a paragraph or article.

4. A distinct part of a city, town, country or people; a part of territory separated by geographecal lines, or of a people considered as distinct. Thus we say, the northern or eastern section of the United States, the middle section, the southern or western section.

5. In geometry, a side or surface of a body or figure cut off by another; or the place where lines, planes, etc. cut each other.

SEC'TIONAL, adjective Pertaining to a section or distinct part of a larger body or territory.

SECT'OR, noun [L. seco, to cut.]

1. In geometry, a part of a circle comprehended between two radii and the arch; or a mixed triangle, formed by two radii and the arch of a circle.

2. A mathematical instrument so marked with lines of sines, tangents, secants, chords, etc. as to fit all radii and scales, and useful in finding the proportion between quantities of the same kind. The sector is founded on the fourth proposition of the sixth book of Euclid, where it is proved that similar triangles have their homologous sides proportional.