Clerk

How to spell clerk

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce clerk

What does clerk mean?

1. nounA person employed to keep records, handle paperwork, or serve customers in an office or shop.
2. verbTo work as a clerk, handling records, sales, or administrative tasks.

Clerk in a sentence

• noun

  The bank clerk counted the deposit twice before printing the receipt.

• verb

  She agreed to clerk at the hardware store during the busy holiday season.

• noun

  A filing clerk organised the contracts by date and client name.

• verb

  Young lawyers often clerk for a judge before joining a firm.

Where does clerk come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Clerk comes from the Latin clericus, meaning 'a member of the clergy', which in turn drew on the Greek klerikos, 'belonging to the clergy', from kleros, 'a lot' or 'inheritance', a reference to the biblical idea that the clergy were the Lord's chosen portion. The word reached English twice: Old English borrowed it as cleric or clerc directly from Church Latin, and Old French reinforced it as clerc during the Middle Ages. Because in the medieval world the clergy were almost the only people who could read and write, the term drifted from 'churchman' to 'literate person', then to 'one who keeps records or accounts', and finally to today's office and shop worker. The British pronunciation 'klark' preserves an older vowel that the spelling no longer signals, while American English shifted it to 'klurk', so the single spelling hides two different sounds. The same clericus root still lives in 'cleric' and 'clergy', which helps explain why a humble office worker shares an ancestor with the church.

How the word is built

• cler- (from clericus: clergyman, scholar)
• -k