| Library / English Dictionary |
CLERGY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
In Christianity, clergymen collectively (as distinguished from the laity)
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("clergy" is a kind of...):
priesthood (the body of ordained religious practitioners)
Meronyms (members of "clergy"):
clergyman; man of the cloth; reverend (a member of the clergy and a spiritual leader of the Christian Church)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "clergy"):
pastorate (pastors collectively)
prelacy; prelature (prelates collectively)
Antonym:
laity (in Christianity, members of a religious community that do not have the priestly responsibilities of ordained clergy)
Derivation:
clerical (of or relating to the clergy)
Context examples:
A group of scientists, doctors, clergy, and patient advocates that reviews and approves the detailed plan for every clinical trial.
(Institutional Review Board, NCI Dictionary)
It is impossible that your own observation can have given you much knowledge of the clergy.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
It is not there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good; and it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most felt.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
The manners I speak of might rather be called conduct, perhaps, the result of good principles; the effect, in short, of those doctrines which it is their duty to teach and recommend; and it will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
