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clap

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Pronunciation

clap1 strike the hands together; a sharp noise

Etymology

The sound is inherited from Middle English clappen, also cleppen,[2][3][4] inherited from Old English clæppan (“to throb, beat”), also clappian,[5][2][6][3][4] from Proto-West Germanic *klappōn, from Proto-Germanic *klappōną (“to clap”).[1][7] It is probably imitative in origin,[4][8][9][10] and is cognate with Old Frisian klapa (“to beat”), Middle Low German klappen (“to chatter”), Old High German klaphōn (“to beat”) and Old Saxon klapunga (“clatter”),[4][11] and with Dutch klappen and German klappen.[9][12] The OED notes that if the word was not kept in Old English it may have re-entered Middle English from Old Norse klappa (“to clap, pat”), and that some senses are probably Norse in any case;[12] Barnhart and Etymonline likewise allow Norse influence,[4][11] and the American Heritage Dictionary derives it from both.[6] The noun, clappe, is formed from the verb;[4][3][13] the OED finds no Old English trace of it but compares Dutch klap and Old High German chlaph (“loud sound, smack”).[12] It is related to clack and clatter.[9][14]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Old English the verb meant to throb or pulsate, and the Middle English Dictionary's first quotation, from the medical treatise Peri Didaxeon (before 1200), uses it of the temples throbbing.[2][5] The noun is recorded from about 1225, in the Ancrene Riwle, for the clapper of a mill and for the human tongue,[12][4] and the verb in the sense "to strike with a quick, sharp motion, to slap" from about 1300.[11][4]

Semantic evolution

The Middle English verb soon meant to talk noisily or chatter, and was used of a ringing bell and a clattering mill.[2][12] The meaning "to make a sharp noise" and the clapping of hands, to get attention or show joy, appear in the late 14th century;[11][12] without mention of the hands, "to applaud", it is recorded from the 1610s,[11] or from 1623, in Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII, in the OED.[12] To clap someone on the back (1520s) keeps the older sense of striking.[11] The noun followed: the clap of thunder from Chaucer (about 1386),[12][11] a sudden blow or slap from 1483,[12] and the sound of hands struck together, applause, from Shakespeare's Henry V (before 1616),[12] the 1590s in Etymonline.[11] A figurative clap, a sudden stroke of misfortune, was used from about 1330 to 1661,[12] and survives in afterclap.[12] In Scotland, Ireland and parts of England the verb also meant to put or set something down suddenly or hastily.[15] In 20th-century slang clap also meant to shoot.[16]

Timeline

  • before 1200 – the verb, to throb, in the Peri Didaxeon.[2]
  • c. 1225 – noun, the clapper of a mill; the human tongue.[12][4]
  • c. 1300 – to strike with a quick, sharp motion, to slap.[11][4]
  • c. 1330 – noun, a sudden stroke of misfortune (obsolete by 1661).[12]
  • c. 1386 – a clap of thunder; to knock at a door.[12]
  • before 1400 – to strike the hands together.[12]
  • 1483 – a sounding blow, a slap.[12]
  • 1520s – to clap someone on the back.[11]
  • before 1616 – applause.[12]
  • 1623 – intransitive, to applaud.[12]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To strike the palms of the hands together, especially to show approval; to applaud: The audience clapped until the band returned.[6][3][17]
  2. To strike two hard surfaces together, or to come together, with a sharp sound: She clapped the lid shut.[6][3][17]
  3. To strike someone lightly with the open hand, as in greeting or encouragement: He clapped his friend on the shoulder.[17][12]
  4. To put or place quickly or forcibly: to clap someone in jail.[17][15]
  5. Of a bird, to beat the wings noisily.[17][3]

Noun

  1. A sudden loud, sharp noise, as of thunder: a clap of thunder.[3][12][11]
  2. The sound of hands struck together; applause.[12][3]
  3. A sounding blow with something flat; a slap or pat.[12][13]
  4. A device that makes a clapping noise, such as the clapper of a mill.[3][12]
  5. (obsolete) The human tongue (about 1225–1593).[12][3]
  6. (obsolete) A sudden stroke of fortune, especially bad fortune (about 1330–1661).[12][3]

Word family

  • afterclap
  • handclap
  • clapboard
  • claptrap
  • thunderclap
  • clapper

clap2 gonorrhea

Etymology

The disease is of uncertain origin.[12][11][8] Most dictionaries derive it borrowed from Middle French clapoir (“bubo, venereal sore”),[3][13][17][10][6] which the Shorter Oxford and Collins call Old French and Merriam-Webster Middle French;[13][17][3] the OED quotes an old French dictionary that defines it as a bubo and links it with a place of debauchery and the disease caught there.[12] The French word is probably from clapier (“rabbit warren; brothel”),[3][6][17] from Old Occitan clapier (“rabbit warren, heap of stones”), from clap (“heap of stones”), perhaps of Celtic origin.[6][3][17] Etymonline links it instead with Middle English clapper (“rabbit hole”), from Old French clapoire (“rabbit burrow”), which came to mean a brothel in slang,[11] and Klein traces it to “le Clapier”, a district of medieval Paris known for its brothels.[9] Green's Dictionary of Slang notes that it appears as standard English in the late 16th century and in lists of cant and slang from the late 17th.[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

Gonorrhoea: 1587, in Higgins's edition of the Mirour for Magistrates.[12][3] Etymonline dates it to the 1580s.[11]

Semantic evolution

The word was soon used with a and in the plural for a case of the disease (1655).[12] A verb, to infect with the clap, is quoted by Green's Dictionary of Slang from 1632, in Brome's Covent-Garden Weeded,[16] and is recorded in the OED from 1658, also figuratively.[12] The Shorter Oxford labels the noun and the verb coarse slang,[13] and Merriam-Webster also uses the noun for a swelling in a horse's legs and for mastitis in cattle.[3]

Timeline

  • 1587 – gonorrhoea.[12][3]
  • 1632 – verb, to infect with venereal disease.[16]
  • 1655 – a clap, a case of gonorrhoea.[12]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (slang) gonorrhea, often as the clap.[3][13][12]
  2. A swelling in the legs of horses, or the disease that causes it; also bovine mastitis.[3]

Verb

  1. (slang) To infect with gonorrhea.[3][13][12]
  • clack
  • clatter

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e 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)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  6. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  14. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  15. ^ a b 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)
  16. ^ a b c d Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins