laicity

Borrowed from French laïcité. By surface analysis, laic +‎ -ity.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /leɪˈɪsɪti/
• (US) IPA^(key): /leɪˈɪsɪɾi/
• Rhymes: -ɪsɪti

laicity (countable and uncountable, plural laicities)

1. The control or influence of the laity or the fact of being lay.
2. Alternative form of laïcité.
3. Synonym of secularism.
   • 1949, The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science‎, page 73:

     A correlation may be observed between the subjects studied in the masonic assemblies and those discussed in the Radical and Radical-Socialist party congresses: between 1901 and 1910 these subjects included state laicity, [...]

   • 2007, The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion‎, page 724:

     This shows that there can be laicity even where there is no formal separation [of Church and State].

   • 2017, Second International Handbook of Urban Education‎, page 596:

     In this sense, there is no doubt that the concept of laicity has been tremendously useful.

• “laicity, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2021.