Definition of "laywoman" [laywoman]

• A woman who is not a cleric. (noun)
• A woman who is a nonprofessional: "[a program] to educate laywomen in the ways of political campaigns” ( New York). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It’s really interesting — it presents the latest biology research papers in terms a laywoman can understand I’m no scientist, and I can follow it."
• "Gertrude Li, for example, a young Chinese laywoman whose experience of persecution is narrated in the fourth chapter of this volume, expresses herself in a letter from February 1952 in language that today we might find somewhat bewildering, if not disturbing: It pleases God to water his harvest with the blood of martyrs."
• "I went to a Jesuit high school, and I've done the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, so I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp, for a laywoman, on the Jesuit psyche."