different between clem vs cleg

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -?m

Etymology 1

Compare clam (“to clog”), or German klemmen (“to jam, clamp; to be stuck, adhere (to a surface)”), Icelandic klmbra, English clamp.

Verb

clem (third-person singular simple present clems, present participle clemming, simple past and past participle clemmed)

1. (Britain, dialect, transitive or intransitive) To be hungry; starve.
   • 1889, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, Between Two Loves, Ch. VI, p. 110:

     " […] Here he's back home again, and without work, and without a penny, and thou knows t' little one and I were pretty well clemmed to death when thou got us a bit o' bread and meat last night. We were that!"

2. To stick, adhere.

References

• The Dictionary of the Scots Language

Etymology 2

Possibly from clementine, a small round citrus fruit.

Noun

clem (plural clems)

1. (Tyneside, vulgar, slang) A testicle.

References

• clem in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• ECML

English

Alternative forms

• clegg
• gleg

Etymology

From Middle English clege, from Old Norse kleggi, possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gl?g?-s (“point”); compare with Norwegian Nynorsk klegg, Ancient Greek ?????? (gl?khís, “barb”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kl??/
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

cleg (plural clegs)

1. (now dialectal) A light breeze.
2. (Scotland, England dialect) A blood-sucking fly of the family Tabanidae; a gadfly, a horsefly.
   • 1657, Thomas Burton, Diary, I,

     Sir Christopher Pack did cleave like a clegg, and was very angry he could not be heard ad infinitum.

   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song, Polygon 2006 (A Scots Quair), p. 39,

     Now that was in summer, the time of fleas and glegs and golochs in the fields, when stirks would start up from a drowsy cud-chewing to a wild a feckless racing, the glegs biting through hair and hide to the skin below the tail-rump.

   • 2011, Denis Brook, Phil Hinchliffe, North to the Cape: A Trek from Fort William to Cape Wrath, page 49,

     Whilst the swarms which surround you are annoying, they do not bite. It is the midges, clegs and ticks you should be on the lookout for.

Synonyms

• (blood-sucking fly of family Tabanidae): blind-fly (Central Africa), deer fly (genus Chrysops), gadfly, horsefly, tabanid

References

• “cleg”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.

References

• Pokorny, Julius (1959) Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [Indo-European Etymological Dictionary] (in German), Bern, München: Francke Verlag, page 1144

Anagrams

• CGEL