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.
He will face opposition from many on the Fed staff and from the central-banking clerisy that includes the recent Fed chairs he has criticized.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026
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
Fortunately, a saving clerisy, a vanguard composed of the understanding few, know where history is going and how to help it get there.
From Washington Post ● May 29, 2015
The clerisy of a nation, that is, its learned men, whether poets, or philosophers, or scholars, are these points of relative rest.
From Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Henry Nelson Coleridge
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.
