Etymologically
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clad

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English clad, also cladde, a past participle of clothen (“to clothe”),[2][3][4][5] inherited from Old English clāþod, past participle of clāþian (“to clothe”),[4][2][6] from clāþ (“cloth”).[7][4] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster give the Old English participle as geclǣþd, from clǣþan (“to clothe”), recorded in the Lindisfarne Gospels about 950;[7][3][8] the MED notes that Old English forms of this verb are rare.[5] Beside it the northern dialects had cled, from Old Norse klæddr, past participle of klæða (“to clothe”);[2][5] the two forms came to be taken as variants of one word, and the northern one is now treated as the Scots pronunciation of clad.[2] The verb clad is formed within English from the participle:[2][3][6][9] the OED takes it as apparently deduced from the adjective, while the American Heritage Dictionary and the Shorter Oxford derive it from cladding,[10][11] which itself first meant clothing and was perhaps formed from clad.[10][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Clothed: about 1250, in the Story of Genesis and Exodus, according to Barnhart;[7] the OED's first quotation is from the Cursor Mundi, before 1300.[2] Etymonline dates cledde to about 1300.[12]

Semantic evolution

Already in Middle English clad was used of things covered as with clothing (before 1400, in the alliterative Morte Arthure) and figuratively for arrayed or decked.[2] Chaucer used clad and cladde alongside clothed as forms of the verb clothen.[13] The Elizabethan archaists revived the prefixed form yclad, which survived as a “Spenserian” word.[2] Weekley noted that the participle lives on in fixed uses such as ironclad, modelled on poetic mailclad.[14] The verb clad, to clothe, appears in 1579 and is now archaic;[2][11] Merriam-Webster dates it to the 13th century and Collins to the 14th.[3][6] Its modern technical sense, to cover something with a layer of another material, especially to bond one metal to another, is from 1939,[2][15] the same year as cladding in this sense.[2] The noun clad, a composite material made by cladding or a coin of bonded metals, followed in 1941.[3][15] In Scots law clad meant furnished or endowed with (from about 1550), and a clad score was twenty-one, a score with one over (1791).[2] In Burns's Ayrshire it could mean thickly covered or thronged, and in West Yorkshire overdressed.[16]

Timeline

  • c. 1250 – clothed, in the Story of Genesis and Exodus.[7]
  • before 1300 – clothed, in the Cursor Mundi.[2]
  • before 1400 – covered as with clothing; figuratively, arrayed.[2]
  • 1579 – the verb, to clothe.[2]
  • 1601 – the verb, to cover as with clothing.[2]
  • 1862 – bearing a cladding.[2]
  • 1939 – the verb, to apply a cladding to.[2][15]
  • 1941 – the noun, a clad material or coin.[3][15]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Clothed or dressed, often in a stated way: walkers clad in waterproofs.[6][3][2]
  2. Covered, as if with clothing, often in compounds: snow-clad hills, ivy-clad walls.[3][15][2]
  3. Having a cladding; of metal, covered with a bonded layer of another metal; of a coin, made of outer layers of one metal bonded to a core of another.[3][15][2]

Verb

  1. To cover with a layer of another material, especially to bond one metal to another as a protective coating: The new library is clad in copper.[6][17][3][2]
  2. (archaic) To clothe.[11][2][3]

Noun

  1. The same as cladding; a material or coin made by cladding.[3][15]

Word family

  • ironclad
  • unclad
  • underclad
  • cladding

Usage notes

Clad is also a past tense and past participle of clothe, now chiefly literary beside clothed.[15][17][6]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  5. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  6. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  7. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  8. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  11. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  13. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  17. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin