"C" Word Origins

clochard

Origin

Borrowed from French clochard.

clock

Dutch

From Middle Dutch clocke, "bell" or "clock," ultimately from a Celtic word meaning "bell" — early clocks were valued for the bells that struck the hour. A doublet of "cloak."

clockwise

Origin

A compound of clock and the suffix -wise, meaning "in the manner or direction of."

clockwork

Origin

A compound of clock and work, referring to the internal gear mechanism of a clock.

clod

Old English

From Old English clot, related to "clot" and "cloud" — originally meaning a lump or mass.

clodhopper

Origin

Compound of clod + hopper (agentive form of the verb hop). Perhaps affected by analogy with grasshopper. The term originated in the 17th century as a derogatory name for a farm laborer—someone who "hopped" (stomped) over "clods" of earth; attested in the sense of "peasant" since the seventeenth century; the extended sense of "boot" or "shoe" dates from the nineteenth century. While originating in Britain, the term survives most strongly in Southern/Appalachian speech.

clodpate

Origin

From clod + pate.

clog

Middle English

Origin uncertain, but likely from a Middle English word for a weight attached to an animal's leg to slow it down — a sense that later broadened to mean any obstruction or hindrance.

cloister

Latin

From Old French cloistre, going back to Latin claustrum, "a place shut in" — from claudere, "to close." The same root gives us "claustrophobia."

clomp

Origin

Probably onomatopoeic or a variant of clump (“walk heavily and clumsily”), itself also onomatopoeic or perhaps from the notion of walking in clumps, from Dutch klomp (“clump, mass, wooden shoe”).

clone

Greek · 1903

Coined in 1903 from Greek klōn, "twig" — the idea being a new plant grown from a cutting. The figurative sense (a copy of a person or thing) only caught on in the 1970s.

Clooney

Origin

Variant of Cloney.

clop

German

Likely echoes the sound itself, related to German/Dutch words for knocking or hitting — the same family as "clap."

close

Latin

From Old French clos, "shut, confined," ultimately from Latin claudere, "to close, bar, enclose." The same Latin root gives "clause," "claustrophobia," and "cloister."

closed caption

English

Closed because the text is carried hidden in the signal and must be decoded and switched on by the viewer, as opposed to open captions which are burned permanently into the picture.

closedown

Origin

Deverbal from close down.

closely

Origin

From close plus the adverb-forming suffix -ly.

closemouthed

Origin

From close + mouthed.

closeness

Origin

From close plus the noun-forming suffix -ness.

closer

Middle English

From Middle English closere, formed from close plus the agent suffix -er.

closet

Old French

From Old French closet, a small private space, itself from clos ("enclosed") plus the diminutive ending -et.

closeted

Origin

From closet plus the adjective-forming suffix -ed.

closure

Latin

From Old French closure, going back to Latin claudere, "to close" — a doublet of "clause" and "cloture."

clot

Old English

From Old English clott, "lump" — a distant relative of "clod" and "klutz."

cloth

Old English

From Old English clāth, related to a root meaning "to cling" or "stick" — describing how fibers hold together in fabric.

clothe

Old English

From Old English clāthian, "to clothe," from the same root as "cloth."

clothed

Origin

From clothe plus the past-tense suffix -ed.

clothes

English

From Old English clathas, the plural of clath 'cloth, garment'; clothes and cloth are historically the same word.

clotheshorse

Origin

From clothes + horse.

clothesline

Origin

A straightforward compound of clothes plus line.

clothing

Middle English

From Middle English clothing, formed from clothe plus -ing.

Clotilde

Germanic

From the Germanic name element Hlūdahildiz, roughly meaning "famous battle."

cloture

Origin

Borrowed from French clôture (“closure”). Doublet of closure and clausure.

cloud

Old English

From Old English clūd, originally meaning "rock" or "hill" — the sense shifted to describe cloud formations because they resembled distant hills in the sky.

cloud computing

English

From cloud, long used in network diagrams as a symbol for a network whose internal detail is not shown, and computing.

cloudburst

Origin

From cloud + burst.

clouded

Origin

From cloud plus the adjective suffix -ed.

cloudy

Old English

From Old English clūdig, originally "rocky" or "hilly," from the same root as "cloud."

clough

Old English

From Old English clōh, a word for a cleft or ravine, likely related to the idea of a cleft or gap in a hillside.

Clouseau

French

Borrowed directly from the French surname Clouseau.

clout

Old English

From Old English clūt, originally "a piece of cloth" or "metal plate" — the "influence" sense developed much later, notably in Chicago political slang, before spreading more widely.

clove

Latin

From Old French clou de girofle, literally "nail of clove" — named for the spice's nail-like shape. Related to Latin clavus, "nail."

clover

Old English

From Old English clāfre, of West Germanic origin, related to Dutch klaver and German Klee.

Clovis

Germanic

The name comes from the Frankish *Hlōdowig — the same Germanic root that gives us "Louis" and "Ludwig." The Clovis archaeological culture is named after Clovis, New Mexico, where the first artifacts were found.

clown

German

Likely from Low German roots meaning "clumsy fellow" or "lump," originally describing a rustic or awkward peasant before narrowing to the comic performer we know today.

clown around

English

A phrasal verb from clown, the circus performer, in the sense of behaving like one.

cloy

Origin

From an aphetic form of Middle English acloyen, from Old French enclouer, encloer, from Vulgar Latin *inclāvāre, from Late Latin clāvāre, from Latin clāvus.

cloying

Origin

By surface analysis, cloy + -ing.