clag

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /klæɡ/

• Audio (AU):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æɡ

Noun

clag (uncountable)

1. A glue or paste made from starch.
2. Low cloud, fog or smog.
   • 1993, Harry Furniss, Memoirs - One: The Flying Game:

     The sky was thick with dirty gray clag

   • 2001, Colin Castle, Lucky Alex: The Career of Group Captain A.M. Jardine Afc, CD, Seaman and Airman

     This programme included practice interceptions, simulator training, day flying, night flying, clag flying -- in addition to […] [a footnote states that clag flying was Air Force slang for foul weather flying.]

   • 2004, David A. Barr, One Lucky Canuck: An Autobiography

     We went along in the clag for what seemed like an eternity [a footnote defines clag as low cloud cover]

3. (railway slang) Unburned carbon (smoke) from a steam or diesel locomotive, or multiple unit.
4. (motor racing slang) Bits of rubber which are shed from tires during a race and collect off the racing line, especially on the outside of corners.

   He ran wide in the corner, hit the clag and spun off.

Derived terms

• snaggy

Verb

clag (third-person singular simple present clags, present participle clagging, simple past and past participle clagged)

1. (obsolete) To encumber
   • c1620:Thomas Heywood, Thomas Heywood's Art of Love: The First Complete English Translation of Ovid's Ars Amatoria

     As when the orchard boughes are clag'd with fruite

   • 1725: Edward Taylor, Preparatory Meditations

     Can such draw to me/My stund affections all with Cinders clag'd

2. To stick, like boots in mud
   • 1999: "A queen of a Santee kitchen, pre-war", quoted by Mary Alston Read Simms in the Introduction to Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821-1909

     Wash the rice well in two waters, if you don't wash 'em, 'e will clag [clag means get sticky] and put 'em in a pot of well-salted boiling water.

Anagrams

• GLAC

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Manx

Etymology

From Old Irish cloc.

Noun

clag m (genitive singular cluig, plural cluig)

1. bell

Derived terms

• shamyr chluig, thie cluig (“belfry”)

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Scottish Gaelic

Etymology

From Old Irish cloc.

Noun

clag m (genitive singular cluig, plural cluig)

1. bell

Derived terms

• beum-cluig

Mutation

Scottish Gaelic mutation
Radical	Lenition
clag	chlag
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.