Clean, quite, or entirely; “CLEAN gone,” entirely out of sight, or away.—Old, see Cotgrave and Shakspeare. Clean contrary, quite different, opposite.
Clean out, to ruin, or make bankrupt any one; to take all he has got, by purchase, chicane, or force. De Quincey, in his article on Richard Bentley, speaking of the lawsuit between that great scholar and Dr. Colbatch, remarks that the latter “must have been pretty well CLEANED OUT.” The term is very general.
Click, a knock or blow. Click-handed, left-handed.—Cornish. A term in Cumberland and Westmoreland wrestling for a peculiar kind of throw, as “an inside CLICK,” or “an outside CLICK.”
Click, to snatch, to pull away something that belongs to another.
Clicker, a female touter at a bonnet shop. In Northamptonshire, the cutter out in a shoemaking establishment. In the Dictionary of the Terms, Ancient and Modern, of the Canting Crew, Lond. n. d. (but prior to 1700), the CLICKER is described as “the shoemaker’s journeyman or servant, that cutts out all the work, and stands at or walks before the door, and saies—‘What d’ye lack, sir? what d’ye buy, madam?’” In a printing-office, a man who makes up the pages, and who takes work and receives money for himself and companions.
Clift, to steal.
Cliggy, or CLIDGY, sticky.—Anglo-Saxon, CLÆG, clay.—See [CLAGGUM].
Clinch (to get the), to be locked up in jail.
Clincher, that which rivets or confirms an argument, an incontrovertible position. Also a lie which cannot be surpassed, a stopper-up, said to be derived as follows:—Two notorious liars were backed to outlie each other. “I drove a nail through the moon once,” said the first. “Right,” said the other; “I recollect the circumstance well, for I went round to the back part of the moon and clinched it”—hence CLINCHER.
Cling-rig, stealing tankards from public-houses, &c.