Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Laypeople considered as a group.
- noun All those persons who are not members of a given profession or other specialized field.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The state of being a layman, or of not being in orders.
- noun The people, as distinguished from the clergy; the body of the people not in orders; laymen collectively.
- noun The people outside of a particular profession, as distinguished from those belonging to it; persons unskilled in a particular art or science, as distinguished from those who are professionally conversant with it.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The people, as distinguished from the clergy; the body of the people not in orders.
- noun obsolete The state of a layman.
- noun Those who are not of a certain profession, as law or medicine, in distinction from those belonging to it.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
people of a church who are not ordainedclergy orclerics . - noun the common man or woman
- noun the unlearned, untrained or ignorant as in “The Layman’s Guide to Basket Weaving”
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun in Christianity, members of a religious community that do not have the priestly responsibilities of ordained clergy
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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Another great evil, arising from the peculiarity of the voluntary system is, that in any of the principal sects the power has been wrested from the clergy and assumed by the laity, who exercise an inquisition most injurious to the cause of religion: and to such an excess of tyranny is this power exercised, that it depends upon the _laity_, and not upon the
Diary in America, Series One Frederick Marryat 1820
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The term laity signifies the aggregation of those Christians who do not form part of the clergy.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent 1840-1916 1913
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Vatican 2 in Lumen Gentium said ‘the apostolate of the laity is a sharing in the salvific mission of the church’ and ‘the laity have the exalted duty of working for the ever greater spread of the divine plan of salvation to all people of every epoch and all over the earth.’
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The French fought off religious conservatives before, previously represented by the Catholic Church; as one of the people I reached out to on the subject living in France reminded me (via email), jogging my memory of laicite as it is labeled (coming from the word laity, those not Catholic).
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The laity is a tremendously heterogeneous group from which an arbitrary sample cannot be assumed to be representative.
Balkinization 2006
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And now, after the abuse crisis, the laity is wary of the bishops.
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Nevertheless, the general word for the priesthood, as distinguished from the laity, is Latin (_ordo_); hence "ordination" and holy "orders."
The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus W. Warde Fowler 1884
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The Church universal in all ages has always divided its membership into two great classes, and two only, the clergy and the laymen, using the terms laity and laymen synonymously and interchangeably.
Samantha among the Brethren — Volume 7 Marietta Holley 1881
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The Church universal in all ages has always divided its membership into two great classes, and two only, the clergy and the laymen, using the terms laity and laymen synonymously and interchangeably.
Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete Marietta Holley 1881
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The distinct specification of the bread and the wine disproves the Romish doctrine of concomitancy, and exclusion of the laity from the cup.
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