Definition of "clerk"

clerk

/klɑːk/

noun
plural clerks
1. One who occupationally provides assistance by working with records, accounts, letters, etc.; an office worker.
  Quotations
  As office boy I made such a markThat they gave me the post of a junior clerk.
  1879, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, composer, “When I Was a Lad”, in H.M.S. Pinafore; […], San Francisco: Bacon & Company, […], page 10
  Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well.
  1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […]
  1. A salesclerk; a person who serves customers in a store or market.
  2. A law clerk.
  3. An employee at a hotel who deals with guests.
  4. The chief legal advisor of a legislature or legislative chamber, who is usually also responsible for keeping minutes of sittings.
2. (Quakerism) A facilitator of a Quaker meeting for business affairs.
3. (archaic) In the Church of England, the layman that assists in the church service, especially in reading the responses (also called parish clerk).
  Quotations
  God save the King! Will no man say, amen? / Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, amen.
  1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act 4, scene 1]
4. (dated) A cleric or clergyman (the legal title for clergy of the Church of England is "Clerk in Holy Orders", still used in legal documents and cherished by some of their number).
5. (obsolete) A scholar.
  Quotations
  And all was for an appel, an appel that he toke/As clerkès finden written in their boke.
  13th century, Traditional carol
verb
third-person singular simple present clerks, present participle clerking, simple past and past participle clerked
1. To act as a clerk, to perform the duties or functions of a clerk.
  Quotations
  He turned to a more attentive audience, and found it in the young fellow they called The Iceman, because he clerked in the swell jewelry store around the corner, and was always there with the finger advertisement for his boss’s diamondware.
  1908 July 4, “Iceman’s Boss Was Easy. How Needles Put the Jeweler Next to a Winner and an Accomodating[sic] Bookie. [New York Press.]”, in The Cincinnati Enquirer, volume LXV, number 186, page 13, column 6
  […] for three years he had worked in the stinking labyrinth of the Mandalay bazaars, clerking for the rice merchants and sometimes stealing.
  1934, George Orwell, chapter 1, in Burmese Days‎
  In the winter, they lived in a town called Hoxie, Arkansas, where Evangelist Gerlash clerked in the Buttorf drugstore and preached and baptized on the side.
  1956, Jean Stafford, "A Reading Problem" in The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984, p. 332

Definition of "clerk"

clerk

noun

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

verb

Quotations