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English philosopher-poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) believed that if humanity was to flourish, it was necessary to create a secular organization of learned individuals, "whether poets, or philosophers, or scholars" to "diffuse through the whole community … that quantity and quality of knowledge which was indispensable." Coleridge named this hypothetical group the clerisy, a term he adapted from Klerisei, a German word for clergy (in preference, it seems, to the Russian term intelligentsia which we borrowed later, in the early 1900s). Coleridge may have equated clerisy with an old sense of clergy meaning "learning" or "knowledge," which by his time was used only in the proverb "an ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy."
Examples of clerisy in a Sentence
Allysia Finley, WSJ, 4 Sep. 2022
They are ruled by a grizzled and sclerotic clerisy that funnels resources to its private army, the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
—Matthew Continetti, National Review, 24 Sep. 2022
All will be forgiven and forgotten by the clerisy of the moment.
—Barton Swaim, WSJ, 18 July 2021
The public-health clerisy also set boundaries for allowable discussion.
—The Editorial Board, WSJ, 26 May 2021
Rather, grace is bestowed by a racial-equity clerisy that undercuts its own power by doing so.
—Daniel Lee, WSJ, 12 Mar. 2021
Meanwhile, at school, the clerisy is enlisting children in a campaign to expose heretics and unbelievers.
—Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 18 Oct. 2017
Only those the board licenses are admitted to the clerisy uniquely entitled to publicly discuss engineering.
—George Will, Twin Cities, 13 June 2017
Dictionary Entries Near clerisy
Cite this Entry
“Clerisy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clerisy. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
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