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What does��laity mean?

Laity is used in a religious context to collectively refer to the group of people who are regular members of a religious congregation and not members of the clergy—that is, people who are not religious officials like priests.The term clergy collectively refers to people who have been ordained or otherwise serve as religious leaders or officials, such as priests, rabbis, and nuns.Laity is a noun form of the adjective lay, which means belonging to, pertaining to, or performed by the people or laity, as distinguished from the clergy.Members of the laity can be called laypeople. The singular form of laypeople is layperson. The gender-specific terms layman and laywoman are also used, though layman is often used regardless of gender.Terms like layman, layperson, and laypeople are perhaps even more commonly used outside of a religious context to refer to people who are not members of a particular profession or who are not experts in or knowledgeable about a particular field. The related phrases layman’s terms and layperson’s terms refer to plain language that the average person can understand, as opposed to technical jargon that can only be understood by experts in the topic or those who are already familiar with it. However, laity is not usually used in this sense.Example: People tend to associate the church with priests, but the truth is that the biggest part of the church is the laity.