Word.ws English Dictionary

clerk-ale

clerk-ale noun: a feast for the benefit of the parish clerk.

Noun

clerk-ale (plural clerk-ales)

  1. (UK, obsolete) A feast for the benefit of the parish clerk.
    • That ALE is festival, appears from its sense in composition; as, amongst others, in the words Lecet-ale, Lamb-ale, Whitson-ale, Clerk-ale, and Church-ale1774-1781, Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry

Forms of clerk-ale

pluralclerk-ales

Questions about clerk-ale

What does clerk-ale mean?
Clerk-ale means a feast for the benefit of the parish clerk.
What part of speech is clerk-ale?
Clerk-ale is a noun.
What is the plural of clerk-ale?
The plural of clerk-ale is clerk-ales.

Words near clerk-ale in the dictionary

  1. clerk of the course
  2. clerk of the pells
  3. clerk of the pipe
  4. clerk of the works
  5. clerk of works
  6. clerk-ale
  7. clerk-ales
  8. clerkage
  9. clerkdom
  10. clerkdoms
  11. clerke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clerk-ale (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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