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Definition of "laicize" [laicize]

  • To free from ecclesiastical control; give over to laypeople. (verb-transitive)
  • To change to lay status; secularize. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "laicize" in a sentence
  • "Only the other day the local authorities were instigated, I know not by whom -- perhaps by the friends of M. Ferry at St. - Dié, which is not very far off -- to "laicize" instruction in Domrémy."
  • "( "Emblematic of this anticlerical mindset was the tendency to" laicize "the names of locations with two words of religious significance, by contracting them into one."
  • "Teresa Kettelkamp, a former Illinois police colonel and executive director of the U.S. bishops 'Secretariat for Children and Young People, said to laicize or not is a tough call and dioceses are feeling their way through the issue."