900 
SEC 
der to receive the privy or great seal. All grants, signed by 
the king, are returned hither, which, transcribed, are carried 
to one of the principal secretaries of state, and sealed, and 
then called signets ; which being directed to the lord privy- 
seal, are his warrant. 
On the secretaries of state is likewise dependent another 
office, called the paper-office ; in which all public writings, 
papers, matters of state, &c., are preserved. 
All the under secretaries and clerks are in the choice of 
the secretary of state, without reserve to any person ; the 
under secretaries receive orders and directions from them, for 
writing dispatches, foreign or domestic, which they give to 
the chief clerk, who distributes them to the under clerks. 
The Secretary at War belongs to the War-office, and has 
under him a deputy secretary, with his private secretary, and 
a number of clerks and other officers. 
Secretary of an embassy is a person attending an am¬ 
bassador, for the writing of dispatches relating to the nego- 
ciation. 
There is a great difference between the secretary of the 
embassy, and the ambassador’s secretary ; the last is a do¬ 
mestic, or menial of the ambassador’s; the first a servant, or 
minister of the prince. 
To SECRE'TE, v. a. [secretus , Latin.] To put aside; 
to hide. [In the animal economy.] To secern; to separate. 
SECRE'TION, s. [secretion, old Fr., secretus, Latin.] 
That agency in the animal economy that separates the va¬ 
rious fluids of the body. The fluid secreted: see Physio¬ 
logy. 
SECRETI'TIOUS, adj. [secretus, Lat.] Parted by ani¬ 
mal secretion. Unused. —They have a similitude or con¬ 
trariety to the secretitious humours in taste and quality. 
Eloyer. 
SE'CRETIST, s. A dealer in secrets. 
SE'CRETLY, adv. Privately; with intention not to be 
known.—Give him this letter ; do it secretly. S/iakspeare. 
—Latently; so as not to be obvious; not apparently.— 
Those thoughts are not wholly mine; but either they are 
seeretly in tbe poet, or may be fairly deduced from him. 
Dryden. 
SE'CRETNESS, s. State of being hidden ; privacy; 
concealment. Quality of keeping a secret. 
I could muster up 
Mv giants and my witches too. 
Which are vast constancy and sccretness. Donne. 
SE'CRETORY, adj. Performing the office of secretion’ 
or animal separation.—All the glands are a congeries of 
vessels complicated together, whereby they give the blood 
time to separate through the capillary vessels into the secre¬ 
tory, which alterwards exonerate themselves into one duct. 
Bay. 
SECROLE, a village in the vicinity of the city of Benara, 
in Ilindostan, where all the European inhabitants reside. 
The houses are detached, like the villas in the neighbourhood 
of London. 
SECT, s. [ secte , French; sccta, Latin.] A body of 
men following some particular master, or united in some 
settled tenets. Often in an opprobrious sense. 
The jealous sects that dare not trust their cause 
So far from their own will as to the laws. 
You for their umpire and their synod take. Dryden. 
A cutting. Of our unbitted lusts, I take this that you call 
love to be a sect or scion. Shakspeare. 
SECTA ad curiam, a writ which lieth against him who 
refuseth to perform his suit to the county court, or court 
baron. 
SECTA facienda per i/lam pure habet ceniciam partem, 
writ to compel the heir that hath the elder’s part among 
co-heirs, to perform service for all the coparceners. 
SECTA ad just it iam faciendum, is a service which a man 
is bound to perform by his fee. 
SECTA molendini, a writ lying where a man by usage, 
time out of mind, &c., has ground his corn at the mill of a 
SEC 
certain person, and afterwards goes to another mill with his' 
corn, thereby withdrawing his suit to the former.' And this 
writ lies especially for the lord against his tenants, who hold 
of him to do suit at his mill. This is now generally turned 
into an action of the case. 
SECTA rega/is, a suit by which all persons were bound 
twice in a year to attend the sheriff’s tourn, and was called 
regalis, because the sheriff’s tourn was the king’s leet; 
wherein the people were to be obliged by oath to bear true 
allegiance to the king, &c. 
SECTA unica tantu?n facienda pro pluribus heredita- 
tibus, a writ that lies for an heir who is distrained by the 
lord to do more suits than one, in respect of the land of 
divers heirs descended to him. 
SECTARIAN, adj. Belonging to sectaries. 
SECTARIANISM, or Sectabism, s. Disposition to 
form sects. 
SE'CTARIST, s. A sectary; one who divides from 
public establishment.—Milton was certainly of that pro¬ 
fession, or general principle, in which all sectarists agree; 
a departure from establishment. Warton. 
SE'CTARY, s. [sectaire, French.] One who divides 
from public establishment, and joins with those distinguished 
by some particular tenets.—The number of sectaries does 
not concern the clergy in point of interest or conscience. 
Swift. —A follower; a pupil. 
The sectaries of my celestial skill, 
That wont to be the world’s chief ornament, 
They under keep. Spenser. 
SECTA'TOR, s. [sectateur, Fr., sectator, Latin.] A 
follower; an imitator; a disciple.—Hereof the wiser sort and 
the best learned philosophers were not ignorant, as Cicero 
witnesseth, gathering the opinion of Aristotle and his secta¬ 
tor s. Ralegh. 
SECTILIA, among the Romans, pavements laid with 
stones cut into various forms. Suetonius distinguishes them 
from those that were tessellated. 
SE'CTION, s. [section, Fr. sectio, Latin ] The act of 
cutting or dividing.—In the section of bodies, man, of all 
sensible creatures, has the fullest brain to his proportion. 
Wotton. —A part divided from the rest. A small and dis¬ 
tinct part of a writing or book.—Without breaking in upon 
the connection of his language, it is hardly possible to give 
a distinct view of his several arguments in distinct sections 
Locke. 
SECTION, in Geometry, denotes a side or surface appear¬ 
ing of a body, or figure, cut by another; or the place 
wherein lines, planes, &c., cut each other. 
The common section of two planes is always a right line; 
being the line supposed to be drawn by the one plane in its 
cutting or entering the other. 
If a sphere be cut in any manner, the plane of the section 
will be a circle, whose centre is in the diameter of the sphere. 
The sections of the cone are five, viz.:—a circle, triangle, 
parabola, hyperbola, and ellipsis. See each under its proper 
article in Co.mc Sections. 
SECTIS non Faciendis, a writ brought by a woman, 
who, for her dower, &c„ ought not to perform suit of court. 
SECTOR, the name of two different astronomical instru¬ 
ments, for measuring small angular distances in the hea¬ 
venly regions; one of which has a motion in or parallel to 
the equator, and the other is directed to the zenith. The 
construction and use of each of these instruments may be 
seen under the respective titles of Equatorial and 
Zenith. 
SECTOR, in Geometry, a part of a circle comprehended 
between the radii and the arc. 
In order to find the area of any sector of a circle, multiply 
the radius by half the arc of the sector, and the product will 
be the area, as in the whole circle. 
Sector also denotes a mathematical instrument, of. great 
use in finding the proportion between quantities of the same 
kind; as between lines and lines, surfaces and surfaces, &c.: 
whence the French call it the compass of proportion. 
The 
