different between clag vs clay

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /klæ?/
• Rhymes: -æ?

Noun

clag (uncountable)

1. A glue or paste made from starch.
2. Low cloud, fog or smog.
   • 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 (c.f marbles).

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

Derived terms

• claggy

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

Manx

Etymology

From Old Irish cloc.

Noun

clag m (genitive singular cluig, plural cluig)

1. bell

Derived terms

• shamyr chluig, thie cluig (“belfry”)

Mutation

Scottish Gaelic

Etymology

From Old Irish cloc.

Noun

clag m (genitive singular cluig, plural cluig)

1. bell

Derived terms

• beum-cluig

Mutation

English

Etymology

From Middle English cley, clay, from Old English cl?? (“clay”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaij, from Proto-Germanic *klajjaz (“clay”), from Proto-Indo-European *gley- (“to glue, paste, stick together”).

Cognate with Dutch klei (“clay”), Low German Klei (“clay”), German Klei, Danish klæg (“clay”); compare Ancient Greek ???? (glía), Latin gl?ten (“glue”) (whence ultimately English glue), Ukrainian ???? (glej, “clay”). Related also to clag, clog.

Pronunciation

• enPR: kl?, IPA^(key): /kle?/, [kl?e?]
• Rhymes: -e?

Noun

clay (usually uncountable, plural clays)

1. A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.

   • Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust […].

2. An earth material with ductile qualities.
3. (tennis) A tennis court surface made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate.

4. (biblical) The material of the human body.
   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Job 10:8-9:

     Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about...thou hast made me as the clay.

   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Isaiah 64:8:

     But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; and we are the work of thy hand.

5. (geology) A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.
6. A clay pipe for smoking tobacco.
7. (firearms, informal) A clay pigeon.

   We went shooting clays at the weekend.

8. (informal) Land or territory of a country or other political region, especially when subject to territorial claims

   Danzig is rightfully German clay.

Antonyms

• (material of the human body): soul, spirit

Hyponyms

• kaolin, kaoline
• ball clay
• fire clay
• potter's clay

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• alluvium

Verb

clay (third-person singular simple present clays, present participle claying, simple past and past participle clayed)

1. (transitive) To add clay to, to spread clay onto.
2. (transitive, of sugar) To purify using clay.
   • 1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 7: Of Colonies, Part 2: Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies,

     They amounted, therefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying or refining sugar for any foreign market, and at present of claying or refining it for the market, which takes off, perhaps, more than nine-tenths of the whole produce.

   • 1809, Jonathan Williams, On the Process of Claying Sugar, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 6.

References

• Krueger, Dennis (December 1982). "Why On Earth Do They Call It Throwing?" Studio Potter volume 11, Number 1.[2] (etymology)
• “clay” in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1974 edition.
• Clay, New Webster Dictionary of English Language, 1980 edition.

Anagrams

• Lacy, acyl, lacy

Middle English

Noun

clay

1. Alternative form of cley (“clay”)