clinker

English

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Clinker brick

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• (brick): klinker

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈklɪŋkə(ɹ)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈklɪŋkɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɪŋkə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: clink‧er

Etymology 1

From Dutch klinkaerd, later klinker, from klinken (“to ring, resound”).

Noun

clinker (countable and uncountable, plural clinkers)

1. A very hard brick used for paving customarily made in the Netherlands.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XXXII, in Capricornia‎, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 581:

     She left the road at the little shed where he whom she still regarded as her father used to keep his tricycle, and walked up the clinker path towards the house.

2. A mass of bricks fused together by intense heat.
3. Slag or ash produced by intense heat in a furnace, kiln or boiler that forms a hard residue upon cooling.
   • 1942 July-August, Philip Spencer, “On the footplate in Egypt”, in Railway Magazine, page 208:

     The coal was terrible stuff—Indian, Abdul told me. The "dart" was used often and I saw some monster clinkers.

   • 1944, Emily Carr, “Dew and Alarm Clocks”, in The House of All Sorts:

     Cold and grim sat that malevolent brute the furnace, greedy, bottomless—its grate bars clenched over clinkers which no shaker could dislodge.

4. An intermediate product in the manufacture of Portland cement, obtained by sintering limestone and alumino-silicate materials such as clay into nodules in a cement kiln.
5. Hardened volcanic lava.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     This wall of rock, which had no doubt once formed the lip of the crater, was about a mile and a half thick, and still covered with clinker.

   • 2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 10:

     Nobody could pretend that a huge slope of clinker is aesthetically pleasing.

6. A scum of oxide of iron formed in forging.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

clinker (third-person singular simple present clinkers, present participle clinkering, simple past and past participle clinkered)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To convert or be converted into clinker.
   • 1923, United States Geological Survey, Bulletin 748, page 125:

     This burning has baked and clinkered the adjacent strata, producing a very resistant formation, which rises with conspicuous abruptness from the flat terrace underlain by the soft Lebo shale member.

   • 1981, David W. Schultz, Municipal solid waste, resource recovery: Proceedings of the seventh annual research symposium at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 16-18:

     The use of coal with a low ash fusion temperature (1204°C, or 2200°F) caused frequent clinkering on the grate during initial tests. The clinkering stopped when the coal was replaced with one having a higher fusion temperature […]

Etymology 2

From clink +‎ -er.

Noun

clinker (plural clinkers)

1. Someone or something that clinks.
2. (in the plural) fetters.

Translations

Etymology 3

From clincher.

Noun

clinker (uncountable)

1. (nautical, chiefly attributive) A style of boatbuilding using overlapping planks.

   clinker planking; a clinker dinghy

Synonyms

• lapstrake

Derived terms

• clinker-built
• clinkerwise

Translations

Anagrams

• crinkle

French

Noun

clinker m (plural clinkers)

1. clinker