clack
verbEtymology From Middle English clacken, clakken, claken, from Old English *clacian (“to slap, clap, clack”), from Proto-Germanic *klakōną (“to clap, chirp”). Cognate with Scots clake, claik (“to utter cries", also "to bedaub, sully with a sticky substance”), Dutch klakken (“to clack, crack”), Low German klakken (“to slap on, daub”), Norwegian klakke (“to clack, strike, knock”), Icelandic klaka (“to twitter, chatter, wrangle, dispute”).
To make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.
- We heard Mr. Hodson's whip clacking on the shoulders of the poor little wretches.1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 8, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
- [He] walked quite jauntily across the courtyard to the distant door, his sandals clacking against the marble.1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 52:
To cause to make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.
To chatter or babble; to utter rapidly without consideration.
- There is a generation of men, whose unweighed custome makes them clack out any thing their heedleſs fancy ſprings1623, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political:
- The women bunched up in little droves and let their tongues clack, and the men herded together and passed a jug around and, to tell the truth, let their tongues clack too.1953, Janice Holt Giles, The Kentuckians:
UK To cut the sheep's mark off (wool), to make the wool weigh less and thus yield less duty.
Dated Dated form of cluck.
- Only the chickens clacked at the Saturday quiet and fat mouse-minded cats licked whiskers on the empty steps.1934, Gladys Bagg Taber, Late Climbs the Sun, page 30:
- We drive on between meadows of mown grass, through a pergola of vines, and so to an orchard of peaches, apples, and pears and a hen colony housed in neat modern cottages, the chickens clacking and scratching away […]1964, Frances Margaret Cheadle McGuire, Gardens of Italy, page 57:
- Derived terms
- clacker