Clerky

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    clerklike; clerkish

    "Returning, he took from his desk Christie's New Commercial Plants and the old Culpepper that I had given him, opened and laid them side by side with a clerky air, all trace of passion gone from his face, read first in one and then in the other, and paused with pen behind his ear."

Example

More examples

"Returning, he took from his desk Christie's New Commercial Plants and the old Culpepper that I had given him, opened and laid them side by side with a clerky air, all trace of passion gone from his face, read first in one and then in the other, and paused with pen behind his ear."

Etymology

From clerk + -y.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.