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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

layman.

Layperson, someone who is not an ordained cleric or member of the clergy.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈleɪmən/
  1. Layperson, someone who is not an ordained cleric or member of the clergy.

  2. Someone who is not a professional in a given field.

    broadly
    Carmen is not a professional anthropologist, but strictly a layman.
    Let me explain it to you [[in layman's terms|in layman's terms]].
  3. A common person.

  4. A person who is untrained or lacks knowledge of a subject.

  5. Lay-sister or lay-brother, person received into a convent of monks, following the vows, but not being member of the order.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English layman, lay man, equivalent to lay (“non-clergy”) + man. Cognate with Old Frisian lēkmann, lēkmonn (“layman”), obsolete Dutch leekeman (“layman”), Old High German leihman (“layman”), Danish lægmand (“layman”), Swedish lekman (“layman”), Norwegian lekmann (“layman”), Icelandic leikmaður (“layman”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.