clem meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

clem

verb

/klɛm/

Etymology Inherited from Middle English *clemmen, *clammen, from Old English clemman, clæmman (“to press, surround”), from Proto-West Germanic *klammjan (“to squeeze”). Cognate with Dutch klemmen (“to jam, pinch, stick”), German klemmen (“to jam, clamp; to be stuck, stick [to a surface]”).

UK, Dialectal To be hungry; starve.

"[…] Here he's back home again, and without work, and without a penny, and thou knows t' little one and I were pretty well clemmed to death when thou got us a bit o' bread and meat last night. We were that!"1889, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, Between Two Loves, Ch. VI, p. 110:
Who are half clemmed from year’s end to year’s end, and see no close to it, no hope, no finish but the pauper’s deals!1919, Stanley J. Weyman, “IX. Old Things”, in The Great House:

clem

noun

Etymology From Old English clām (“paste, mortar, mud, clay, poultice”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaim, equivalent to cloam. Similar linguistic development led to the Northumbrian pronunciation of hyem, equivalent to the RP home.

Geordie, Teesside, Slang A brick or stone.

Slang One stone (unit of mass).

Chiefly Hartlepool; plural clem; chiefly Hartlepool; plural clem

Geordie, Slang, Vulgar A testicle.

Synonyms: clemmy