secle

English

Etymology

From Latin saeculum. Compare French siècle. See secular.

Noun

secle (plural secles)

1. (obsolete) A century.
   • 1644, Henry Hammond, Practical Catechism:

     Of a man's age, part he lives in his father's life-time, and part after his son's birth; and thereupon it is wont to be said that three generations make one secle, or hundred years in the genealogies.

2. (Ancient Rome) The length of an epoch, believed to be the amount of time that elapsed from the start of one epoch to the time when no one who was alive at that point is still alive (starting at the founding of Rome).
   • 1845, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, ‎Sir Travers Twiss, Niebuhr's History of Rome - Volumes 1-2, page 55:

     If on this principle we calculate back from this first secular epoch preserved in history, the beginning ot the second secle falls U.C. 78.

   • 1847, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, ‎Leonhard Schmitz, The History of Rome - Volume 1, page 138:

     Such a secular year therefore was probably the term assigned to the life of the gods, as the natural secle was to the life of man, the secular day to that of nations, the secular week to that of one human race. They taught, as we know historically, that the expiration of each secular day was announced by wonders and signs, intelligible to them. So was the close of every natural secle; ten of which, of unequal length, made up a great day. The signs by which each of these epochs had been foreshewn, were recorded in their history .

   • 1887, Horace, ‎James Lonsdale, ‎Samuel Lee, The Works of Horace, page 85:

     So the haruspex Vulcatius announced that the comet which appeared shortly after the assassination of Julius Cæsar indicated the end of the ninth secle and the beginning of the tenth.

Old French

Etymology

From Latin saeculum.

Noun

secle oblique singular, ? (oblique plural secles, nominative singular secle, nominative plural secles)

1. world