LAYMAN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does layman mean? 

• LAYMAN (noun)
  The noun LAYMAN has 1 sense:

1. someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person

  Familiarity information: LAYMAN used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LAYMAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

layman; layperson; secular

Hypernyms ("layman" is a kind of...):

common man; common person; commoner (a person who holds no title)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "layman"):

lay reader (a layman who is authorized by the bishop to read parts of the service in an Anglican or Episcopal church)

Holonyms ("layman" is a member of...):

laity; temporalty (in Christianity, members of a religious community that do not have the priestly responsibilities of ordained clergy)

Antonym:

clergyman (a member of the clergy and a spiritual leader of the Christian Church)

 Context examples 

It is certainly rather deep for a layman.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Why, you had scarce gone ere this loathly John came running back again, and, when I oped mouth to reproach him, he asked me whether it was indeed likely that a man of prayer would leave his own godly raiment in order to take a layman's jerkin.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Or evaporation might preserve an equilibrium, remarked Challenger, and the two learned men wandered off into one of their usual scientific arguments, which were as comprehensible as Chinese to the layman.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)