clink
verbEtymology From Middle English clinken, from Old English *clincan (compare clynnan, clynian (“to sound; resound”)), from Proto-Germanic *klinganą (“to sound”). Cognates include Middle Dutch klinken and German klingen. Related to cling (sound) and clang. May be further related to call. Perhaps of onomatopoeic origin, as metal against metal.
1
Ambitransitive To make a clinking sound; to make a sound of metal on metal or glass on glass; to strike materials such as metal or glass against one another.
- The hammers clinked on the stone all night.
- The broken sheds look'd sad and strange, / Unlifted was the clinking latch, / Weeded and worn the ancient thatch / upon the lonely moated grange.1830 June, Alfred Tennyson, “Mariana”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, →OCLC, stanza I, page 10:
2 more examples
- Never you mind if I / Don't tell strangers passing by / If I don't brag / If I don't brag or boast / Clink my glass and say a toast / About my love for you / How it runs so deep and true1970, Four Tops, “Still Water (Love)”, in Still Waters Run Deep:
- On the other side: the rich, beautiful tapestry of WASP culture that constituted Levis's life—friends playing horseshoes at backyard cocktail parties, where girls swanned in chaise longues, clinking their gin and tonics.2022, Ling Ma, “G”, in Bliss Montage, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN:
- Derived terms
- clinkable, clinker, clinking stuff, clinkstone, clinky