Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who is not a cleric.
- noun One who is a nonprofessional in a given field.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An unprofessional man; a man belonging to the laity or general mass of people, as distinguished from members of the professions of divinity, law, and medicine; specifically, one who does not belong to the clerical profession; more particularly, a church-member who is not a clergyman: also sometimes applied to persons with reference to any other profession or occupation in which they are not expert.
- noun Same as
lay-figure , 1.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One of the people, in distinction from the clergy; one of the laity; sometimes, a man not belonging to some particular profession, in distinction from those who do.
- noun A lay figure. See under
Lay , n. (above).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
layperson , someone who is not an ordainedcleric or member of theclergy - noun by analogy, someone who is not a professional in a given field
- noun a common person
- noun a person who is untrained or lacks knowledge of a subject
- noun a generally ignorant person
- noun lay-sister or lay-brother, person received into a convent of monks, following the vows, but not being member of the order
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Probably took hand in more constitutional questions than anybody in history, and you'll find his decisions always had what I call layman's language in part of them, so they'd understand it.
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Now, Gentlemen, if our layman is a stockholder, he may figure something like this
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And that's how we did it, in layman's terms, without getting into the technical aspects of it too deeply.
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In debate this is called "dropping the argument"; in layman's terms, it means that if you don't address it, you have conceded that your opponent is correct.
Tom McIntyre Explains His Picks for our 2009 Hunting and Fishing Heroes and Villians Face-Off 2009
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And that's how we did it, in layman's terms, without getting into the technical aspects of it too deeply.
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In debate this is called "dropping the argument"; in layman's terms, it means that if you don't address it, you have conceded that your opponent is correct.
Tom McIntyre Explains His Picks for our 2009 Hunting and Fishing Heroes and Villians Face-Off 2009
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Thank you for you well thought out and considered reply, I have taken in most of the posts here and elsewhere and the only conclusion I can come to as a layman is “shrug”
Replace Police With Spin Doctors « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2009
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In debate this is called "dropping the argument"; in layman's terms, it means that if you don't address it, you have conceded that your opponent is correct.
Tom McIntyre Explains His Picks for our 2009 Hunting and Fishing Heroes and Villians Face-Off 2009
-
In debate this is called "dropping the argument"; in layman's terms, it means that if you don't address it, you have conceded that your opponent is correct.
Tom McIntyre Explains His Picks for our 2009 Hunting and Fishing Heroes and Villians Face-Off 2009
-
In debate this is called "dropping the argument"; in layman's terms, it means that if you don't address it, you have conceded that your opponent is correct.
Tom McIntyre Explains His Picks for our 2009 Hunting and Fishing Heroes and Villians Face-Off 2009
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