clack

English

Etymology

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”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /klæk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æk

Noun

clack (plural clacks)

1. An abrupt, sharp sound, especially one made by two hard objects colliding repetitively; a sound midway between a click and a clunk.
2. Anything that causes a clacking noise, such as the clapper of a mill, or a clack valve.
3. Chatter; prattle.
   • 1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 6th edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: J Bettenham, for Jonah Bowyer, , published 1727, →OCLC:

     whose chief intent is to vaunt his spiritual clack

4. (colloquial) The tongue.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

clack (third-person singular simple present clacks, present participle clacking, simple past and past participle clacked)

1. (intransitive) To make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.
   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 8, in Vanity Fair , London: Bradbury and Evans , published 1848, →OCLC:

     We heard Mr. Hodson's whip clacking on the shoulders of the poor little wretches.

   • 1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 52:

     [He] walked quite jauntily across the courtyard to the distant door, his sandals clacking against the marble.

2. (transitive) To cause to make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.
3. To chatter or babble; to utter rapidly without consideration.
   • 1623, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political:

     There is a generation of men, whose unweighed custome makes them clack out any thing their heedleſs fancy ſprings

   • 1953, Janice Holt Giles, The Kentuckians:

     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.

4. (UK) To cut the sheep's mark off (wool), to make the wool weigh less and thus yield less duty.
5. Dated form of cluck.
   • 1934, Gladys Bagg Taber, Late Climbs the Sun, page 30:

     Only the chickens clacked at the Saturday quiet and fat mouse-minded cats licked whiskers on the empty steps.

   • 1964, Frances Margaret Cheadle McGuire, Gardens of Italy, page 57:

     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 […]

Translations

References

“clack”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.