clack

/klæk/

clack noun: an abrupt, sharp sound, especially one made by two hard objects colliding repetitively; a sound midway between a click and a clunk. Also the dated form of cluck.

Noun

clack (plural clacks)

An abrupt, sharp sound, especially one made by two hard objects colliding repetitively; a sound midway between a click and a clunk.
Anything that causes a clacking noise, such as the clapper of a mill, or a clack valve.
Chatter; prattle.
- whose chief intent is to vaunt his spiritual clack1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London
(colloquial) The tongue.

Verb

clack (third-person singular simple present clacks, present participle clacking, simple past and past participle clacked)

(intransitive) To make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.
- We heard Mr. Hodson's whip clacking on the shoulders of the poor little wretches.1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 8, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
- [He] walked quite jauntily across the courtyard to the distant door, his sandals clacking against the marble.1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 52
(transitive) To cause to make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.
To chatter or babble; to utter rapidly without consideration.
- There is a generation of men, whose unweighed custome makes them clack out any thing their heedleſs fancy ſprings1623, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political
- The women bunched up in little droves and let their tongues clack, and the men herded together and passed a jug around and, to tell the truth, let their tongues clack too.1953, Janice Holt Giles, The Kentuckians
(UK) To cut the sheep's mark off (wool), to make the wool weigh less and thus yield less duty.

Proper noun capitalized: Clack

Clack (plural Clacks)

A surname.

Also used as

clack is also the dated form of cluck.

Examples of clack in a sentence

Laptoppers in jeans and toques clacked along to MGMT in the wood-paneled common area.
Puay Sim interrupted, clacking her chopsticks decisively over a slice of fried fish.
Instead of a raft floating down the Mississip,' it'll be a clickity clack across the desert.

All 18 example sentences with clack

Forms of clack

Noun
plural	clacks
Verb
third-person singular present	clacks
present participle	clacking
past participle	clacked
past	clacked
Proper noun
plural	Clacks

Plural of clack: clacks

Origin of clack

From Middle English clacken, clakken, claken, from Old English *clacian (“to slap, clap, clack”), from Proto-Germanic *klakōną (“to clap, chirp”). Cognate with Scots clake, claik (“to utter cries", also "to bedaub, sully with a sticky substance”), Dutch klakken (“to clack, crack”), Low German klakken (“to slap on, daub”), Norwegian klakke (“to clack, strike, knock”), Icelandic klaka (“to twitter, chatter, wrangle, dispute”).

Words formed from clack

Phrases with clack

Words that rhyme with clack

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about clack

What does clack mean?: Clack means an abrupt, sharp sound, especially one made by two hard objects colliding repetitively; a sound midway between a click and a clunk.
What part of speech is clack?: Clack can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce clack?: Clack is pronounced /klæk/.
What is the plural of clack?: The plural of clack is clacks.

Words near clack in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: clack (page history and authors); Clack (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-clack.wav.

Cite this entry: “clack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.