The educated or literary class of a society; the clergy and educated professionals as a distinct social group.
From clergy (Old French clergie, meaning 'learning') with the suffix -sy. The word was revived by 19th-century Romantic writers, particularly Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to describe intellectuals and the educated elite.
Coleridge used 'clerisy' to describe what we might now call the 'intelligentsia'—but the word never became popular despite its use by major Romantic poets, showing that even famous writers can't always make new words stick.
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