clerkless

English

Etymology

From Middle English clerkles; equivalent to clerk +‎ -less.

Adjective

clerkless (not comparable)

1. Without clerks.
   • 1940, John Thomas Flynn, Country Squire in the White House, page 32:

     Whatever the cause of the failure, the clerkless store did not materialize.

2. (obsolete, rare) Uneducated.
   • 1653, Edward Waterhous[e], An humble Apologie for Learning and Learned Men‎^[1], page 40:

     […] at which Postern may come in Tyranny, and rigorous cruelty; like that of the Turk, whose military Janizaries and Bashaws, rule all in their Clerklesse and cruel way; to abate the fear of which, as Armes have been practised but sparingly by true and Virtuous Princes, so hath Learning still been kept on and encouraged, as that which modificates, and attempers the rigidity of Martial inclinations.

   • 1878, Alice O’Hanlon, Erleston Glen […], page 198:

     And so, having held forth in this wise full half an hour, using very fine-sounding words, but showing himself most clerkless, inasmuch as that he demonstrated not any point he advanced, and by his lack of logic caused divers of us ofttimes to smile, he consented at last, when our patience was well-nigh exhausted, to hold his peace, and to suffer, as he had promised, that an answer should be made him.

   • 1888, John Ruskin, Præterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life, volume 3, page 45:

     Their solitary and clerkless preacher, a somewhat stunted figure in a plain black coat, with a cracked voice […] put his utmost zeal into a consolatory discourse on the wickedness of the wide world, more especially of the plain of Piedmont and city of Turin, and on the exclusive favor with God, enjoyed by between nineteen and twenty-four elect members of his congregation, in the streets of Admah and Zeboim.

Further reading

• “clerkless”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.