different between clog vs befoul

English

Etymology

Unknown; perhaps from Middle English clog (“weight attached to the leg of an animal to impede movement”). Perhaps of North Germanic origin; compare Old Norse klugu, klogo (“knotty tree log”), Dutch klomp.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kl??/
• (US) IPA^(key): /kl??/, /kl??/

• Rhymes: -??

Noun

clog (plural clogs)

1. A type of shoe with an inflexible, often wooden sole sometimes with an open heel.
   • 2002, Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones, Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press, Chapter 5, p. 92,^[1]

     She stomped up the stairs. Her clogs slammed against the pine boards of the staircase and shook the house.

2. A blockage.

3. (Britain, colloquial) A shoe of any type.
4. A weight, such as a log or block of wood, attached to a person or animal to hinder motion.
   • 1855, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Letters” in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, p. 115,^[2]

     A clog of lead was round my feet / A band of pain across my brow;

5. That which hinders or impedes motion; an encumbrance, restraint, or impediment of any kind.
   • 1777, Edmund Burke, A Letter from Edmund Burke: Esq; one of the representatives in Parliament for the city of Bristol, to John Farr and John Harris, Esqrs. sheriffs of that city, on the Affairs of America, London: J. Dodsley, p. 8,^[3]

     All the ancient, honest, juridical principles and institutions of England, are so many clogs to check and retard the headlong course of violence and oppression.

Derived terms

• clever clogs
• clog dance
• clogless
• cloglike
• clogs to clogs in three generations
• pop one's clogs
• shot-clog

Translations

Verb

clog (third-person singular simple present clogs, present participle clogging, simple past and past participle clogged)

1. To block or slow passage through (often with 'up').

2. To encumber or load, especially with something that impedes motion; to hamper.
3. To burden; to trammel; to embarrass; to perplex.

   • The commodities […] are clogged with impositions.
4. (law) To enforce a mortgage lender right that prevents a borrower from exercising a right to redeem.
   • 1973, Humble Oil & Refining Co. v. Doerr, 123 N.J. Super. 530, 544, 303 A.2d 898.

     For centuries it has been the rule that a mortgagor’s equity of redemption cannot be clogged and that he cannot, as a part of the original mortgage transaction, cut off or surrender his right to redeem. Any agreement which does so is void and unenforceable ^[sic] as against public policy.

5. (intransitive) To perform a clog dance.

Derived terms

• anticlog
• cloggable
• cloggy
• clog up
• declog
• nonclogging
• unclog
• uncloggable

Translations

References

Anagrams

• G-LOC

Irish

Etymology

From Old Irish cloc.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kl???/

Noun

clog m (genitive singular cloig, nominative plural cloig)

1. bell
2. clock
3. blowball, clock (of dandelion)
4. blister

Declension

• Alternative plural: cloganna (Cois Fharraige)

Derived terms

Verb

clog (present analytic clogann, future analytic clogfaidh, verbal noun clogadh, past participle clogtha)

1. (intransitive) ring a bell
2. (transitive) stun with noise
3. (intransitive) blister

Conjugation

Mutation

References

• "clog" in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.
• “clog” in Foclóir Gae?ilge agus Béarla, Irish Texts Society, 1st ed., 1904, by Patrick S. Dinneen, page 150.
• “clogaim” in Foclóir Gae?ilge agus Béarla, Irish Texts Society, 1st ed., 1904, by Patrick S. Dinneen, page 151.
• Gregory Toner, Maire Ní Mhaonaigh, Sharon Arbuthnot, Dagmar Wodtko, Maire-Luise Theuerkauf, editors (2019) , “cloc”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Welsh

Etymology

From Proto-Brythonic *klog, from Proto-Celtic *kluk?. Cognate with Irish cloch, Scottish Gaelic clach.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /klo??/

Noun

clog f (plural clogau)

1. cliff, rockface

Related terms

• clegyr (“rock, crag”)

Mutation

English

Etymology

be- +? foul

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b??fa?l/
• Rhymes: -a?l

Verb

befoul (third-person singular simple present befouls, present participle befouling, simple past and past participle befouled)

1. To make foul; to soil; to contaminate, pollute.
   • 1846, Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, London: for the author, “Avignon to Genoa,” p. 34,^[1]

     These heights are a desirable retreat, for less picturesque reasons—as an escape from a compound of vile smells perpetually arising from a great harbour full of stagnant water, and befouled by the refuse of innumerable ships with all sorts of cargoes: which, in hot weather, is dreadful in the last degree.

   • 1897, Robert Gwynneddon Davies (translator), The Sleeping Bard by Ellis Wynne, London: Simplkon, Marshall & Co., Part I,^[2]

     At last, what with a round of blasphemy, and the whole crowd with clay pistols belching smoke and fire and slander of their neighbours, and the floor already befouled with dregs and spittle, I feared lest viler deeds should happen, and craved to depart.

   • 1983, Mary Stewart, The Wicked Day, New York: William Morrow, Chapter 5, p. 53,^[3]

     Only the four walls of his home still stood, blackened and smoking with the sluggish, stinking smoke that befouled the sea-wind.

   • 1997, Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid, “Echo and Narcissus” in Paul Keegan (ed.), Ted Hughes: Collected Poems, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003, p. 919,^[4]

     There was a pool of perfect water.

     […] No cattle

     Had slobbered their muzzles in it

     And befouled it.

2. (specifically) To defecate on, to soil with excrement.
   • 1666, George Alsop, A Character of the Province of Mary-Land, London: Peter Dring, Preface,^[5]

     For its an ill Bird will befoule her own Nest […]

   • 1748, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random, London: J. Osborn, Volume I, Chapter 12, p. 91,^[6]

     “ […] But pray what smell is that? Sure your lapdog has befoul’d himself;—let me catch hold of the nasty cur, I’ll teach him better manners.”

3. (figuratively) To stain or mar (for example with infamy or disgrace).
   • 1894, Hall Caine, The Manxman, London: Heinemann, Part 5, p. 282,^[7]

     For three days Pete bore himself according to his wont, thinking to silence the evil tongues of the little world about him, and keep sweet and alive the dear name which they were waiting to befoul and destroy.

   • 1923, James Branch Cabell, The High Place, London: John Lane, Part 2, Chapter 15,^[8]

     “ […] you combine a vulgar atheism and an iconoclastic desire to befoul the sacred ideas of the average man or woman, collectively scorned as the bourgeoisie——”

   • 1927, Frances Noyes Hart, The Bellamy Trial, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929, Chapter 5, p. 159,^[9]

     There she sits before you, gentlemen, betrayed by her husband, befouled by every idle tongue that wags […]

4. To entangle or run against so as to impede motion. (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:)

Synonyms

• (stain or mar): besmirch, sully, tarnish

Related terms

• afoul

Translations