clerical
/ˈklɛrɪk(ə)l
/adjective
1Concerned with or relating to work in an office, especially routine documentation and administrative tasks: a clerical assistant clerical duties...
- Under the reforms, support assistants took over 24 clerical and routine tasks from teachers when the new term began last week.
- They also refuse to carry out clerical, administrative and porter duties.
- The work tasks varied from foundry work and heavy engineering to precision engineering and clerical and administrative work.
Synonyms
office, desk, back-room;
administrative, secretarial, writing, typing, keyboarding, filing, bookkeeping;
white-collar
informal pen-pushing
2Relating to the clergy: he was still attired in his clerical outfit...
- As many have observed, clerical and especially episcopal accountability is a complex matter.
- This shift is most striking in the more clerical churches, the Anglican and Roman Catholic.
- There is a huge difference between clerical reform of the church and lay renewal of the church.
Synonyms
ecclesiastical, church, priestly, pastoral, religious, spiritual, prelatic, apostolic, canonical, parsonical;
holy, divine
archaic vicarial
rare sacerdotal, hieratic, rectorial, presbyteral
Derivatives
clericalism
/ nounsense 2. ...- The revolutionaries of 1789 fought in the name of secularism against the clericalism of feudal society, and enacted a firm separation of church and state.
- In the past, as a reaction to clericalism, we have sometimes expected our priests to be ‘one of the guys,’ and perhaps this is where we have erred.
- It is simply clericalism to suggest that religious leaders and public intellectuals ‘own’ the just war tradition in a singular way.
clericalist
/ nounsense 2. ...- As a young adult, his activities led to his being pursued by clericalists and monarchists alike, and he had to take refuge outside France.
- As this work goes forward, it will be essential to set aside the clericalist mentality that raises obstacles to clear thinking.
- The clericalist career pattern of ‘promotion’ to a larger and more prominent diocese or archdiocese should be abandoned.
clerically
- They doggedly believe that EC should just clerically run the elections which must be ordered by them, for their benefit, at their convenience.
- They are laying the pillars of a new, clerically protected democratic order.
- This new government, however, managed to alienate the native population by seizing clerically held lands, closing religious schools, and abolishing shariat courts.
Origin
Late 15th century (in sense 2): from ecclesiastical Latin clericalis, from clericus 'clergyman' (see cleric).