Word.ws English Dictionary

lay brethren

lay brethren is the plural of lay brother.

Meaning of lay brother

Noun

lay brother (plural lay brothers or lay brethren)

  1. A layman who is a member of a religious congregation or monastic order without the intention to become a priest.
    • In feudal days lay brothers were usually uneducated commoners, who did most menial, manual labor while the learned priestly monks held the more spiritual jobs.
    Synonyms:
    conversus

Questions about lay brethren

What is lay brethren the plural of?
Lay brethren is the plural of lay brother.

Words near lay brethren in the dictionary

  1. lay back and thought of England
  2. lay bare
  3. lay bare one's soul
  4. lay before
  5. lay behind
  6. lay brethren
  7. lay brother
  8. lay brothers
  9. lay by
  10. lay by the heels
  11. lay bye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lay brethren (page history and authors); lay brother (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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