Dictionary

unclerical en · ADJ

Etymology

From un- + clerical.

Meanings

1. Not clerical.
   • A more remorseless foe, however, than Foote appeared in the person of Charles Churchill, the wild and unclerical son of a poor curate of Westminster. 1890, Grace & Philip Wharton, The Wits and Beaux of Society:
   • As they came to the churchyard, the grave-digger was just busy at a grave, and it was quiet about him; no sheep, no goat came and desecrated man's last resting-place; for in this village the churchyard was no pasture for unclerical animals. 1914, Various, The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII:
   • She drew from her gloved palm her offering and extended it towards Brother Weldon, who with unclerical haste and noise took the office. 1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 162:
   • The solitary muezzin, who cried the mughreb at the close of the fast, and lighted the lamps on his minaret, went through with his work in most unclerical haste, now that there was no one to notice him. 1854 (date written), Bayard Taylor, “The Forests of Phrygia”, in The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam & Co., […], published 1855, →OCLC, page 283:

Forms

Deriveds

unclerically