From Middle English clerc, from Old English clerc, from Late Latin clēricus, from Ancient Greek κληρικός, from κλῆρος.

• (RP) IPA: /klɑːk/
• (America) enPR: klerk, IPA: /klɝk/
• (Australia) IPA: /klɐːk/, /klɜːk/

clerk (plural clerks)

1. One who occupationally provides assistance by working with records, accounts, letters, etc.; an office worker.
   • 1879, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, composer, “When I Was a Lad”, in H.M.S. Pinafore;  […], San Francisco: Bacon & Company,  […], →OCLC ↗, page 10 ↗:

     As office boy I made such a mark
     That they gave me the post of a junior clerk.

   • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC ↗:

     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.

   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).
   • 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, →OCLC ↗, [Act 4, scene 1]:

     God save the King! Will no man say, amen? / Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, amen.

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.
   • 13th century, Traditional carol,

     And all was for an appel, an appel that he toke/As clerkès finden written in their boke.

• register
• registrar
• scribe
• secretary

• clergy
• clergyman
• cleric
• clerical

• Portuguese: clérigo
• Spanish: clérigo

• French: greffier, greffière
• German: Büroangestellte, Angestellte, Buchhalter, Bürokaufmann, Bürokauffrau, Gerichtsschreiber, Schreiber, Kontorist, Kontoristin
• Italian: impiegato, impiegata
• Portuguese: escriturário, escrevente, secretário, empregado de escritório
• Russian: клерк
• Spanish: oficinista, secretario, escribiente, auxiliar administrativo

clerk (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.

   The law school graduate clerked for the supreme court judge for the summer.

   • 1934, George Orwell, chapter 1, in Burmese Days‎:

     […] for three years he had worked in the stinking labyrinth of the Mandalay bazaars, clerking for the rice merchants and sometimes stealing.

   • 1956, Jean Stafford, "A Reading Problem" in The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984, p. 332,

     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.

2. (medicine) To assemble information about a patient during their initial assessment by actions such as a taking a detailed medical history and performing a physical examination.

Derived from the noun clerk

1. Surname.