"trahison des clercs" meaning in English

See trahison des clercs in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: trahisons des clercs [plural]
Etymology: Borrowed from French trahison des clercs (literally “treason of the clerks”); originally adopted from the title of the French philosopher and novelist Julien Benda’s 1927 book, La Trahison des Clercs (whose first English translation bore the title The Betrayal of the Intellectuals). See too: "In 1927, the French essayist Julien Benda published his famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age, La Trahison des Clercs. [He used] “clerc” in “the medieval sense,” i.e., to mean “scribe,” someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia. Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are in this sense clercs. The “treason” in question was the betrayal by the “clerks” of their vocation as intellectuals." Etymology templates: {{bor|en|fr|trahison des clercs|lit=treason of the clerks}} French trahison des clercs (literally “treason of the clerks”) Head templates: {{en-noun|trahisons des clercs|nolinkhead=1}} trahison des clercs (plural trahisons des clercs)
  1. A compromise of intellectual integrity by members of an intelligentsia.
    Sense id: en-trahison_des_clercs-en-noun-5h5v1SEQ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (ca09fec and c40eb85). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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