Secte

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of people who hold distinctive religious or philosophical beliefs and have separated from a larger parent faith or tradition
2. An archaic spelling for a body of adherents who follow a particular doctrine and have split away from an established church or school
3. A faction bound together by a shared set of unorthodox beliefs, often set apart from the mainstream religion it grew out of

Etymology: The core idea is "following." Latin "sequi" meant "to follow," and its past participle gave the noun "secta," a following, a company of people who went after a leader or shared a way of life. Old French turned it into "secte," and English borrowed that form, later settling on the spelling "sect." The sense of a group that breaks away from a larger body grew out of that sense of following a particular leader or doctrine. The same root sits behind several familiar English words. "Second" comes from Latin "secundus," meaning "following" in order. "Sequel," "consequence," and "consecutive" all share the "sequi" base, and "sue" descends from the same verb through Old French "suer," to follow up a claim. A legal "suit" in its older sense was a following or pursuit of a claim, which shows how a single idea of following branched into very different meanings.