clergy
noun
Simple meaning
Body of persons, such as priests, who are trained and ordained for religious service.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
klurjeeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈklɝdʒi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Body of persons, such as priests, who are trained and ordained for religious service.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Body of persons, such as priests, who are trained and ordained for religious service.
Used this way, clergy is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a religious use: it carries the weight of tradition and ceremony.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Religion/spirituality
- Historical writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: body of persons or such as priests
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.