clerisy
/ˈklɛɹɪsi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.02 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "2003: By the nineteenth-century clerisy […] Christianity itself, yoked to material civilization, came to be questioned as gross and vulgar. — Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (Penguin 2004, p. 432)"
- "2016: Only the highly educated write so badly. Indeed, the point of such ludicrous prose is to signal membership in a closed clerisy that possesses a private language. — George F. Will, Washington Post, 18 Nov, 2016"
- "2022: We invent ourselves as American writers—it's not a clerisy we’re born into... — Edward Hirsch, The Heart of American Poetry (Library of America, 2022)"
- "Few men have ever had a stronger conviction of their clerisy, of their belonging to the clerkly caste of the responsibles."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek κλῆρος (klêros) + -isy. Introduced by Coleridge, based on German Clerisei (modern Klerisei), from Late Latin clēricus.