Word.ws English Dictionary

preclerical

preclerical adjective: before the development of the clergy.

Adjective

preclerical (not comparable)

  1. Before the development of the clergy.
    • And on the other hand, Tolstoy's attempt to recapture the ethos of "primitive," preclerical Christianity enjoined a dramatic detachment from personal wealth and possessions, a communitarian communism […]2007, Daniel Burston, Erik Erikson and the American Psyche: Ego, Ethics, and Evolution, page 132

Origin of preclerical

From pre- + clerical.

Questions about preclerical

What does preclerical mean?
Preclerical means before the development of the clergy.
What part of speech is preclerical?
Preclerical is an adjective.

Words near preclerical in the dictionary

  1. precleared
  2. preclearing
  3. preclears
  4. precleavage
  5. precleaved
  6. preclerical
  7. preclimacteric
  8. preclimacterics
  9. preclimactic
  10. preclimax
  11. preclinic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preclerical (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “preclerical.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preclerical. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.