Word.ws English Dictionary

clamming up

/klæ.mɪŋɡ.ʌp/

clamming up is the present participle and gerund of clam up.

Meaning of clam up

Verb

clam up (third-person singular simple present clams up, present participle clamming up, simple past and past participle clammed up)

  1. (informal, intransitive) To become silent; to stop talking.
    • Maybe he … or she … was a witness who refused to clam up … a whistle blower …1986, Paul Chadwick, Concrete: Under the Desert Stars, Dark Horse Books
  2. (ambitransitive) To make or become clammy.

Questions about clamming up

What is clamming up the present participle and gerund of?
Clamming up is the present participle and gerund of clam up.
How do you pronounce clamming up?
Clamming up is pronounced /klæ.mɪŋɡ.ʌp/.

Words near clamming up in the dictionary

  1. clammier
  2. clammiest
  3. clammily
  4. clamminess
  5. clamming
  6. clamming up
  7. clammish
  8. clammishness
  9. clammy
  10. clammy cuphea
  11. clammy goosefoot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clamming up (page history and authors); clam up (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:

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