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The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle.
Any loud, sudden, explosive sound made by striking hard surfaces together, or resembling such a sound.
Off in the distance, he heard the clap of thunder.
But it took him a long time to get down-stairs, and a still longer to undo the fastenings, repenting (I dare say) and taken with fresh claps of fear at every second step and every bolt and bar.
[...] Pipes, who acted as the enemy's forlorn hope, advanced to the gate with great intrepidity, and clapping his foot to the door, which was none of the ſtouteſt, with the execution and diſpatch of a petard, ſplit it into a thouſand pieces.
(obsolete) To slam (a door or window); formerly often construed with to.
Uncertain. Probably from Old Frenchclapoir(“bubo, inflammation from infection”), from clapier(“brothel”).
May also be from old, unsafe treatments for gonnorhea, such as clapping the penis between a book and a hard surface to break up obstructions in the urethra and permit urination. Attested from the 16th century.
I stepped out of my tent in Marrakech one night to get a bar of candy and caught your dose of clap when that Wac I never even saw before hissed me into the bushes.
1972, Richard Hooker, MASH, page 32:
“What in hell makes you think he's got the clap?” Hawkeye asked. “Even a clap doctor can't diagnose it through a parka
He thought I had given him the clap [gonorrhea], but I knew I didn't.
1998, Dan Savage, Savage Love, page 229:
When I explained that I thought he had given me the clap, he said I must be mistaken, it had to be someone I'd “tricked” with at ... He'd never had an STD in his life, he told me, and slammed down the phone.