cleat

/kliːt/

cleat noun: a strip of wood or iron fastened on transversely to something in order to give strength, prevent warping, hold position, etc.

Image: Andree Stephan, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cleat (plural cleats)

A strip of wood or iron fastened on transversely to something in order to give strength, prevent warping, hold position, etc.
- [...] the people of that island erected lofty spars along the seacoast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 35”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
- I had learned that cattle willingly walk down a ramp that has cleats to provide secure, nonslip footing.1995, Temple Grandin, Thinking in Pictures, page 6
A continuous metal strip, or angled piece, used to secure metal components.
A device to quickly affix a line or rope, and from which it is also easy to release.
A protrusion on the bottom of a shoe or wheel meant for better traction.
- Near-synonym: calk
Synonyms:

calk
An athletic shoe equipped with cleats.
- He needs to put on five pieces of gear: his helmet, left glove, right glove, left cleat, and right cleat.2020, Allyssa Loya, Sporty Bugs and Errors, page 26
- Italy, which lifted the trophy for the fourth time in Berlin two decades ago, has been spiraling downward ever since. The Azzurri didn’t survive their group in 2010 and 2014 and haven’t qualified since. This time the Norwegians, known more for their skill on skis than in cleats, beat them twice in...2026 June 21, John Powers, “The World Cup group stage was supposed to be a feeding frenzy. So far, not so much.”, in The Boston Globe, retrieved 21 Jun 2026

Verb

cleat (third-person singular simple present cleats, present participle cleating, simple past and past participle cleated)

To strengthen with a cleat.
- An inner floor over the whole area of the deck provides a space for all the cable and pipe runs. On one side the cables are cleated into a duct which is sealed against the ingress of water and oil; the pipe lines run underneath the opposite side floor.1960 April, “Type "3" Diesel-Electric Locomotives for the Southern Region”, in Railway Magazine, page 239
To tie off, affix, stopper a line or rope, especially to a cleat.

cleat meaning in Tamil and Punjabi

cleat in Tamil

தாங்குறுப்பு, பிடிகட்டை, முளை, இருசிறைக்கருவி, கோலற்றடை, ஆப்பு

Examples of cleat in a sentence

Edges, chocks, cleats, etc, shall be deemed to be included in the item.
A guy who owns multiple pairs of variously cleated shoes.
Fischer sees it and gets red in the face, then hawks up a snotball and spits at my cleat.

All 10 example sentences with cleat

Synonyms of cleat

calk

Forms of cleat

Noun
plural	cleats
Verb
third-person singular present	cleats
present participle	cleating
past participle	cleated
past	cleated

Origin of cleat

From Middle English clete, from Old English *clēat (“block, wedge”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaut, from Proto-Germanic *klautaz (“firm lump”), from Proto-Indo-European *gelewd-, from *gley- (“to glue, stick together, form into a ball”). Cognate with Dutch kloot (“ball; testicle”) and German Kloß (“clump”). See also clay and clout.

Words formed from cleat

Words that rhyme with cleat

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cleat

What does cleat mean?: Cleat means a strip of wood or iron fastened on transversely to something in order to give strength, prevent warping, hold position, etc.
What is cleat in Tamil?: Cleat in Tamil is தாங்குறுப்பு, பிடிகட்டை, முளை. See Cleat meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is cleat?: Cleat can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cleat?: Cleat is pronounced /kliːt/.
What is the plural of cleat?: The plural of cleat is cleats.

Words near cleat in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: cleat (page history and authors); cleat (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਗੁਟਕਾ (Punjabi) (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-cleat.wav.

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