Word.ws English Dictionary

lay brothers

lay brothers 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 brothers

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

Words near lay brothers in the dictionary

  1. lay bare one's soul
  2. lay before
  3. lay behind
  4. lay brethren
  5. lay brother
  6. lay brothers
  7. lay by
  8. lay by the heels
  9. lay bye
  10. lay byes
  11. lay bys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lay brothers (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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