CLERK
What does "CLERK" mean?
A person employed to keep records, handle correspondence, or attend to routine administrative or sales duties.
Meanings
- An office worker who keeps records or performs general administrative tasks. The filing clerk logged every invoice by hand.
- A person who serves customers in a shop or at a counter. Ask the clerk at the front desk for a refund.
- An official who keeps the records of a court, council, or legislature. The clerk of the court read out the charges. formal
- To work as a clerk. She clerked for a federal judge after law school.
Did you know?
- 'Clerk', 'cleric', and 'clergy' are the same word in disguise - in the Middle Ages, churchmen were often the only literate record-keepers, so the term for a priest drifted into the term for an office worker.
Word origin
From Latin 'clericus' (clergyman) via Old English 'clerc' and Old French 'clerc'; in the Middle Ages clergy were among the few who could read and write, so the word shifted to mean any literate record-keeper.
Remember it
A CLERK is a CLERgy member who learned to write - drop the 'gy', keep the pen.
A little poem
Once the only hand that knew the alphabet,
now a name on a desk, a stamp, a queue-
the same patient pen, outliving every empire.
tercet
Wordplay
- The court clerk and the shop clerk got into an argument. One filed a complaint; the other just rang it up.
What it teaches
The quiet keeper of records often holds more power than the people in the headlines.
Quick facts
What does CLERK mean?
A person employed to keep records, handle correspondence, or attend to routine administrative or sales duties.
Is CLERK a valid word?
Yes — CLERK is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is CLERK?
CLERK has 5 letters and 1 syllable.
Where does CLERK come from?
From Latin 'clericus' (clergyman) via Old English 'clerc' and Old French 'clerc'; in the Middle Ages clergy were among the few who could read and write, so the word shifted to mean any literate record-keeper.
What can CLERK teach us?
The quiet keeper of records often holds more power than the people in the headlines.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.