more searches
5 wordies list

clerk

(n): an employee who performs clerical work (e.g., keeps records or accounts)
( more... )
Leave a comment, citation, or private note
3 months ago qroqqa said:

v.i. work as a clerk – I've never come across this verbal use before. (OED marks it as colloquial now, but has examples back to 1551.)

I can remember all the tenants of the front room upstairs, who came and went: Vernie, who clerked in a store; the fabulous Doc Marlowe, who made and sold Sioux Liniment and wore a ten-gallon hat with kitchen matches stuck in the band; the blonde and mysterious Mrs Lane, of the strong perfume and the elegant dresses; Mr Richardson, a guard at the penitentiary, who kept a gun in his room; and a silent, thin, smiling man who never revealed his business and left with his rent two weeks in arrears.
—James Thurber, 1952, 'Daguerreotype of a Lady', in The Thurber Album

Register or login to leave a comment.
first listed by:
brandelion (3226 words)
appears in these lists: