Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person who works in an office performing such tasks as keeping records, attending to correspondence, or filing.
- noun A person who keeps the records and performs the regular business of a court, legislative body, or municipal district.
- noun Law A law clerk, as for a judge.
- noun A person who works at a sales counter or service desk, as at a store or hotel.
- noun A cleric.
- noun Archaic A scholar.
- intransitive verb To work or serve as a clerk.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To write; compose.
- To serve as a clerk; act as accountant or salesman: frequently used in the phrase to clerk it.
- noun A clergyman; a priest; an ecclesiastic; a man in holy orders.
- noun A learned man; a man of letters; a scholar; a writer or author; originally, a man who could read, an attainment at one time confined chiefly to ecclesiastics.
- noun The layman who leads in reading the responses in the service of the Church of England. Also called
parish clerk . - noun An officer of a court, legislature, municipal corporation, or other body, whose duty generally is to keep the records of the body to which he is attached, and perform the routine business: as, clerk of court; town clerk; clerk to a school-board, etc. See
secretary . - noun One who is employed in an office, public or private, or in a shop or warehouse, to keep records or accounts; one who is employed by another as a writer or amanuensis.
- noun In the United States, an assistant in business, whether or not a keeper of accounts; especially, a retail salesman.
- noun In the United States, a popular name for the head of the meteorological department of the Signal Service.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete A clergyman or ecclesiastic.
- noun obsolete A man who could read; a scholar; a learned person; a man of letters.
- noun engraving A parish officer, being a layman who leads in reading the responses of the Episcopal church service, and otherwise assists in it.
- noun One employed to keep records or accounts; a scribe; an accountant.
- noun United States An assistant in a shop or store.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun One who
occupationally works withrecords ,accounts ,letters , etc.; anoffice worker . - noun A
facilitator of aQuaker meeting forbusiness affairs - noun archaic In the Church of England, the layman that assists in the church service, especially in reading the responses (also called parish clerk).
- verb To act as a clerk, to perform the duties or functions of a clerk
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an employee who performs clerical work (e.g., keeps records or accounts)
- noun a salesperson in a store
- verb work as a clerk, as in the legal business
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Disturbed by these losses, whenever for the future he had a mind to purchase an estate for himself, he gave the original writings to his principal clerk, who made a correct transcript of them; this transcript was then handed to Sir Anthony, and five guineas (his fee) along with it, which was regularly _charged to him by the clerk_.
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In England in medieval times the term clerk acquired in common parlance the significance of an educated man.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery
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"It's like someone died," said Melissa Mattero, 37, the title clerk, who handles the paperwork on completed sales.
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The title clerk was in too big of a hurry to ask one question and ended up doing the search on the wrong address, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development was overcharged by $1,900!
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He feels that having one career clerk and one term clerk allows his chamber to run much more smoothly.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Federal Judicial Clerk Cost Controls:
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Sansoni, a title clerk, worked for a small title company that went bust because of the theft.
CBS3.com - Philadelphia's Source For Breaking News, Weather, Traffic and Sports
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Prosecutors had argued for incarceration for Sansoni, who also served as a title clerk at
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Prosecutors had argued for incarceration for Sansoni, who also served as a title clerk at
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The perky clerk is Julie Piekarski, an original cast member of “The Facts of Life.”
Taco Bell Star Trek III Glasses – Week 3 is a Spoiler - The Retroist
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That shipping clerk is always Señor García, never Juan.
qroqqa commented on the word clerk
v.i. work as a clerk – I've never come across this verbal use before. (OED marks it as colloquial now, but has examples back to 1551.)
I can remember all the tenants of the front room upstairs, who came and went: Vernie, who clerked in a store; the fabulous Doc Marlowe, who made and sold Sioux Liniment and wore a ten-gallon hat with kitchen matches stuck in the band; the blonde and mysterious Mrs Lane, of the strong perfume and the elegant dresses; Mr Richardson, a guard at the penitentiary, who kept a gun in his room; and a silent, thin, smiling man who never revealed his business and left with his rent two weeks in arrears.
—James Thurber, 1952, 'Daguerreotype of a Lady', in The Thurber Album
July 10, 2008
nuxiy commented on the word clerk
I am a clerk
May 17, 2009