Word.ws English Dictionary

clepe

/kliːp/

clepe verb: to give a call; cry out; appeal.

Verb

clepe (third-person singular simple present clepes, present participle cleping, simple past cleped or clept, past participle cleped or clept or ycleped or yclept)

  1. (archaic, dialectal, intransitive) To give a call; cry out; appeal.
  2. (archaic, dialectal, transitive) To call; call upon; cry out to.
  3. (archaic, dialectal, transitive) To call to oneself; invite; summon.
  4. (archaic, dialectal, transitive) To call; call by the name of; name.
    • She clepes him king of graues, & graue for kings, / Imperious ſupreme of all mortall things.1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC, lines [995–996]
    • See Borneo's sea-girt shore where ever flow / the perfumed liquor's thick and curded gouts, / the tears of forest-trees men "Camphor" clepe, / wherefore that Island crop of Fame shall reap.1880, Richard Francis Burton, Os Lusíadas, volume II, page 408
    Synonyms:
    designate
  5. (dialectal, intransitive, often) To tell lies about; inform against (someone).
    • You tried to mentor someone, teach them the basics of the trade, and they ran off to clype on you.2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 173
    Synonyms:
    grass
  6. (dialectal, intransitive) To be loquacious; tattle; gossip.
    Synonyms:
    blab
  7. (dialectal, transitive) To report; relate; tell.

Noun

clepe (plural clepes)

  1. (dialectal) A cry; an appeal; a call.
    • So bold was I to show my voice that night / With clepes, and cries, to fill the street throughout / With Creuse’ name in sorrow, with vain tears ; / And often-sithes the same for to repeat.a. 1547, “Virgil’s Æneid”, in Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, transl., edited by Geo. Fred. Nott, The Works of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey and of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, volume I, London: T....

Synonyms of clepe

All synonyms of clepe

Forms of clepe

Verb
third-person singular presentclepes
present participlecleping
pastcleped
pastclept
past participlecleped
past participleclept
past participleycleped
past participleyclept
alternative formcleep
alternative formclip
alternative formclep
alternative formclaip
alternative formclype
Noun
pluralclepes

Origin of clepe

From Middle English clepen, clepien, from Old English cleopian, clipian (“to speak, cry out, call, summon, invoke, cry to, implore”), from Proto-Germanic *klipōną (“to ring, sound”), from Proto-Indo-European *gal- (“to sound”). Cognate with Old Frisian klippa, kleppa (“to ring”), Dutch kleppen (“to toll, chatter”), Middle Low German kleppen (“to strike, sound”), Middle Low German kleperen (“to rattle”).

Words formed from clepe

Words that rhyme with clepe

30 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about clepe

What does clepe mean?
Clepe means to give a call; cry out; appeal.
What part of speech is clepe?
Clepe can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce clepe?
Clepe is pronounced /kliːp/.
What is the past tense of clepe?
The past tense of clepe is cleped.

Words near clepe in the dictionary

  1. Cleopatraesque
  2. Cleopatran
  3. cleopatras
  4. Cleora
  5. clep
  6. clepe
  7. cleped
  8. clepes
  9. clepest
  10. clepeth
  11. clepht

Source and license

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

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