clerisy
Collocations
3ADJ.
closed
CLERISY + NOUN
christianity, itself, re
PREP.
in
Definitions
noun
An elite group of intellectuals; learned people, the literati.
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
The clergy, or their opinions, as opposed to the laity.
Few men have ever had a stronger conviction of their clerisy, of their belonging to the clerkly caste of the responsibles.
Thesaurus
Synonyms
noun — an educated and intellectual elite
- intelligentsia
Antonyms
Idioms & Phrases
Example Bank
32003: 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. 4
Wiktionary2016: 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 Pos
Wiktionary2022: 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)
Wiktionary