Word.ws English Dictionary

clag

/klæɡ/

clag noun: a glue or paste made from starch.

Noun

clag (uncountable)

  1. A glue or paste made from starch.
  2. Low cloud, fog or smog.
    • The sky was thick with dirty gray clag1993, Harry Furniss, Memoirs - One: The Flying Game
    • This programme included practice interceptions, simulator training, day flying, night flying, clag flying -- in addition to […] [a footnote states that clag flying was Air Force slang for foul weather flying.]2001, Colin Castle, Lucky Alex: The Career of Group Captain A.M. Jardine Afc, CD, Seaman and Airman
  3. (railway slang) Unburned carbon (smoke) from a steam or diesel locomotive, or multiple unit.
  4. (slang) Bits of rubber which are shed from tires during a race and collect off the racing line, especially on the outside of corners (cf. marbles).
    • He ran wide in the corner, hit the clag and spun off.

Verb (1)

clag (third-person singular simple present clags, present participle clagging, simple past and past participle clagged)

  1. (obsolete) To encumber
    • As when the orchard boughes are clag'd with fruitec. 1620, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Heywood's Art of Love: The First Complete English Translation of Ovid's Ars Amatoria
    • Can such draw to me/My stund affections all with Cinders clag'd1725, Edward Taylor, Preparatory Meditations
  2. To stick, like boots in mud
    • Wash the rice well in two waters, if you don't wash 'em, 'e will clag [clag means get sticky] and put 'em in a pot of well-salted boiling water.1999: "A queen of a Santee kitchen, pre-war", quoted by Mary Alston Read Simms in the Introduction to Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821-1909

Verb (2)

clag (third-person singular simple present clags, present participle clagging, simple past and past participle clagged)

  1. (Geordie, Teesside) To hit

Forms of clag

third-person singular presentclags
present participleclagging
past participleclagged
pastclagged

Origin of clag

From Middle English claggen, probably of Scandinavian origin. Compare Swedish klägg and Old English clǣġ.

Words formed from clag

Words that rhyme with clag

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about clag

What does clag mean?
Clag means a glue or paste made from starch.
What part of speech is clag?
Clag can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce clag?
Clag is pronounced /klæɡ/.

Words near clag in the dictionary

  1. claffichords
  2. Claflin
  3. Claflins
  4. clafouti
  5. clafoutis
  6. clag
  7. Clagett
  8. Clagetts
  9. Clagg
  10. clagged
  11. Claggett

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clag (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-clag.ogg.

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