Word.ws English Dictionary

clapperclaw

clapperclaw verb: to fight and scratch.

Verb

clapperclaw (third-person singular simple present clapperclaws, present participle clapperclawing, simple past and past participle clapperclawed)

  1. (obsolete) To fight and scratch.
    • Steady, Birds! present your beaks! in double time, charge and attack,
      Pounce upon them, smash the potlid, clapperclaw them, tear and hack.1909, John Hookham Frere translating Aristophanes, Acharnians
  2. (obsolete) To abuse with words; to revile; to scold.

Forms of clapperclaw

third-person singular presentclapperclaws
present participleclapperclawing
past participleclapperclawed
pastclapperclawed
alternative formcapperclaw

Questions about clapperclaw

What does clapperclaw mean?
Clapperclaw means to fight and scratch.
What part of speech is clapperclaw?
Clapperclaw is a verb.
What is the past tense of clapperclaw?
The past tense of clapperclaw is clapperclawed.

Words near clapperclaw in the dictionary

  1. clapper-loaders
  2. clapperboard
  3. clapperboarded
  4. clapperboarding
  5. clapperboards
  6. clapperclaw
  7. clapperclawed
  8. clapperclawing
  9. clapperclaws
  10. clapperdudgeon
  11. clapperdudgeons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clapperclaw (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.

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