Lots of words have unified origins. They diverge to allow 2 different concepts to be named. Calling someone a cleric still means something different to calling them a clerk.
However, a clerical error could be ambiguous. Likely as the term was less common, and so didn’t have enough usage to warrant divergence.
Hmm yes but surely clerk is just a descendant of cleric right? It’s almost a contraction
It is actually!
Basically only the clergy could read and write, so they handled accounting and acted as scribes to nobles and the monarchy.
It split off like 600 years ago or so
Edit: a few extra words added in, I’m going to blame the keyboard/autocorrect just because I can.
Lots of words have unified origins. They diverge to allow 2 different concepts to be named. Calling someone a cleric still means something different to calling them a clerk.
However, a clerical error could be ambiguous. Likely as the term was less common, and so didn’t have enough usage to warrant divergence.
Yes, that would be more of an ecumenical error.
Careful now.
down with this sort of thing