clerisy
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of clerisy
1818; < German Klerisei clergy < Medieval Latin clēricia, equivalent to clēric ( us ) cleric + -ia -ia; introduced by S.T. Coleridge
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Diplomats joined international lawyers and experts from nonprofit foundations and the academy to form a secular clerisy that set rules for governments to impose.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 17, 2025
On the one hand, their contributions to stunning wartime technological breakthroughs—radar, sonar, rocketry, and above all the atomic bomb—had transformed them into an intellectual clerisy, holding the keys to the nation’s future.
From Slate • Mar. 17, 2025
Only those the board licenses are admitted to the clerisy uniquely entitled to publicly discuss engineering.
From Washington Post • Jun. 7, 2017
You have never met a more cocksure lot than the monetary-policy clerisy.
From The Wall Street Journal • Sep. 9, 2016
They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for the old, new aims and methods; in preferring a grain of mother wit to a peck of clerisy.
From Byron by Nichol, John
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
