clee, a claw; ‘Pied d’un cancre, the clee or claw of a crab’, Cotgrave; ‘The clee of a bittor’, Turbervile, Falconrie, 349; cleaze pl., Phaer, tr. Aeneid, viii. 209; Studley, Seneca’s Hercules, 206 b (NED.). See EDD. (s.v. Clee). ME. cle, ‘ungula’ (Cath. Angl.). OE. clēa. Cp. [cleye].
cleeves, cliffs; ‘Dover’s neighbouring cleeves’, Drayton, Pol. xviii; Greene, Friar Bacon, i. 1. 62. ME. clefe of an hyll, ‘declivum’ (Prompt.). Due to OE. cleofu, the plural form, or to cleofe, the dat. of clif. ‘Cleeve’ is very common in place-names in the west of England: Cleeve (Clyffe Pypard) in Wilts.; Church Cleves in Dorset; Old Cleeve, Huish Cleeve, Bitter Cleeve in Somerset.
clem, to starve for want of food. B. Jonson, Ev. Man out of Humour, iii. 1 (Shift); Poetaster, i. 1 (Tucca). To ‘clem’ (or to ‘clam’) is the ordinary word for starving in various parts of England, see EDD. (s.v. Clam, vb.2 1). The lit. meaning of clam (clem) is ‘to pinch’, still used in this sense in the north country, see EDD. (s.v. Clam, vb.1 1. Cp. Dan. klemme, Sw. klämma, to pinch.
clench, clinch, a pun. Dryden, Mac Flecknoe, 83; Prologue to Tr. and Cr. (1679), 27.
clenchpoop, a lout, a clown; a term of contempt. Warner, Albion’s England; bk. vi, ch. xxxi, st. 22; clinchpoop, or clenchpoop, Three Ladies of London, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vi. 256.
clepe, to call. L. L. L. v. 1. 24; Hamlet, i. 4. 19. The pp. is spelt cleeped in Chapman, Gent. Usher, ii. 1 (Pogio); the usual form is the archaic y-clept, spelt y-clep’d in Milton, L’Allegro, 12. OE. clipian, cleopian, to call; pp. ge-cleopod.
clergion, a young songster, fig. of birds. Surrey, Description Restless State, 22; Poems, 72; in Tottel’s Misc. 231. ME. clergeon, a chorister (Chaucer, C. T. B. 1693). F. clergeon.
clergy, clerkly skill, learning. Proverb, ‘An Ounce of Mother-Wit is worth a Pound of Clergy (or Book-learning)’, see NED.; Middleton, Family of Love, iii. 3 (Purge). The privilege of exemption from sentence which might be pleaded by every one who could read; ‘Stand to your clergy, uncle, save your life’, Munday, Death Huntington, i. 3, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, viii. 244. Clergy of belly, respite claimed by a pregnant woman. Butler, Hudibras, iii. 1. 884. ME. clergy: ‘Lewdnesse of clergy, illiteratura’ (Prompt. EETS., 261).
cleye, a claw. Marlowe, tr. Lucan, bk. i, l. 36 from end; B. Jonson, Underwoods, Eupheme, ix. 18; ‘The cleyes of a lobster’, Skinner (1671). ‘Cley’ is an E. Anglian word, see EDD. (s.v. Clee). ME. cley of a beast, ‘ungula’ (Prompt. EETS., 85, see note, no. 383). Cp. [clee].
clicket, to be maris appetens, to copulate. Massinger, Picture, iii. 4 (Eubulus); Beaumont and Fl., Hum. Lieutenant, ii. 4 (Leontius); Tusser, Husbandry, § 77. 9. As a hunting term, it had reference to the fox and the wolf; see Turbervile, Hunting, c. 66, p. 186; c. 75, p. 205.