cling

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English clingen,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English clingan (“to stick together, congeal; to shrink, wither”), a strong verb with past tense clang and past participle clungen,^[5][6][7][8] inherited from Proto-Germanic *klinganą (“to stick, cling”).^[9][5] Its cognates include Middle Dutch klingen (“to stick, adhere”),^{[10][11][12][13]} Middle High German klingen (“to climb”),^[10][11][13] Old High German klinga (“narrow gorge”),^[10][5] Old Norse klengjask (“to press onward”)^[10][5] and Danish klynge (“to cluster”).^[5][14][8] Holthausen adds klunga (“tangled ball of thread”),^[15] which Merriam-Webster also lists, comparing words outside Germanic as well.^[4] The causative verbs clench and clinch come from a variant of the same Germanic base,^{[16][14][17][12]} and Kroonen relates it to the verbs behind clink.^[9] Johnson (1755) derived it from Danish.^[18]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Old English the verb is recorded in the senses "to congeal, harden" (in the poem Andreas) and "to shrink, shrivel" (in Ælfric's Grammar), the latter about 1000 according to Barnhart;^[7][10][6] Ayto notes that Old English shows only these specialized senses, not yet "adhere".^[16]

Semantic evolution

Ayto takes the underlying sense to be "stick, adhere", and explains the Old English senses by the way something that loses its moisture contracts upon itself or sticks more closely to a surface.^[16] The familiar sense "to adhere to something else" appears in the late 13th century:^[16][5] the OED and the Historical Thesaurus date the sticking of skin or dried flesh to bone to about 1325, and adhering in general to before 1400,^[19] Barnhart has "hold fast" before 1280,^[10] and the MED quotes a bird's bill clinging shut about 1300.^[3] The figurative sense, clinging to hopes or beliefs, is recorded from 1582,^[19][5] and of people holding each other in an embrace from about 1600;^[5][16] Johnson (1755) quotes the two spent swimmers of Macbeth who cling together.^[18] Clothes have clung since 1792.^[5] The old sense "to shrink, shrivel" survived in dialect: in Scotland, Ulster and northern England wood clings in a drought and a hungry person is clung, thin and wasted.^[20][7] The noun cling, the act of clinging, is from 1641, and in the 19th century cling was short for clingstone.^[7]

Timeline

• Old English – to congeal, harden; to shrink, shrivel.^[7][6]
• c. 1000 – to shrivel, in Ælfric's Grammar.^[10]
• before 1280 – to hold fast.^[10]
• c. 1325 – to adhere as a result of contracting.^[19]
• before 1400 – to adhere, stick fast.^[19]
• 1582 – figuratively, to adhere to a belief or person.^[19]
• c. 1600 – of people, to hold each other in an embrace.^[5]
• 1641 – noun, the act of clinging.^[7]
• 1747 – of wood, to shrink in a drought.^[7]
• 1792 – of clothes.^[5]
• 1842 – to remain close to, as if attached.^[19]

Meanings

Verb

1. To hold on tightly to someone or something by gripping or embracing: The child clung to her father's coat.^[21][4][18]
2. To stick or adhere closely to a surface: Wet sand clung to their boots.^[21][4]
3. cling together: to stay in contact or close to one another.^[21][4]
4. To stay physically close to someone or something: The road clings to the coast.^[21][19]
5. To hold on to a belief, hope or habit, refusing to give it up: They clung to the old ways.^[21][19]
6. (dialect) To shrink, shrivel or wither, or to become thin from hunger.^[20][7]

Word family

• clinger
• clingy
• clingingly
• clingingness
• clingstone
• anticling
• clingfish
• noncling

Related words

• clench
• clinch
• clink

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b 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)
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
15. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
16. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
17. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
18. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
19. ^ a b c d e f g h Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
20. ^ 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)
21. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins