clergy

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for clergy is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈklɜːdʒi/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,511 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A body of persons, such as priests, who are trained and ordained for religious service.".

Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for clergy, with forms such as "cclergy", "celrgy", and "clegry". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 10 confusable-pair relationships, "clerk", "cleric", "clerks", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English clergie (attested in the 13th century), from Old French clergie (“learned men”), from Late Latin clēricātus, from Latin clēricus (“one ordained for religious services”), from Ancient Greek κληρικός (klērikós, “of the clergy”). Equivalent… The correct English form is clergy, spelled C-L-E-R-G-Y.