clinker
Syllables: clink·er/ˈklɪŋkə(ɹ)/US/ˈklɪŋkɚ/
clinker noun: a very hard brick used for paving customarily made in the Netherlands.
Noun (1)
clinker (countable and uncountable, plural clinkers)
- A very hard brick used for paving customarily made in the Netherlands.
- She left the road at the little shed where he whom she still regarded as her father used to keep his tricycle, and walked up the clinker path towards the house.1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XXXII, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 581
- Synonyms:
- Dutch clinker
- A mass of bricks fused together by intense heat.
- Slag or ash produced by intense heat in a furnace, kiln or boiler that forms a hard residue upon cooling.
- The coal was terrible stuff—Indian, Abdul told me. The "dart" was used often and I saw some monster clinkers.1942 July-August, Philip Spencer, “On the footplate in Egypt”, in Railway Magazine, page 208
- Cold and grim sat that malevolent brute the furnace, greedy, bottomless—its grate bars clenched over clinkers which no shaker could dislodge.1944, Emily Carr, “Dew and Alarm Clocks”, in The House of All Sorts
- An intermediate product in the manufacture of Portland cement, obtained by sintering limestone and alumino-silicate materials such as clay into nodules in a cement kiln.
- Hardened volcanic lava.
- This wall of rock, which had no doubt once formed the lip of the crater, was about a mile and a half thick, and still covered with clinker.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
- Nobody could pretend that a huge slope of clinker is aesthetically pleasing.2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 10
- A scum of oxide of iron formed in forging.
Verb
clinker (third-person singular simple present clinkers, present participle clinkering, simple past and past participle clinkered)
- To convert or be converted into clinker.
- This burning has baked and clinkered the adjacent strata, producing a very resistant formation, which rises with conspicuous abruptness from the flat terrace underlain by the soft Lebo shale member.1923, United States Geological Survey, Bulletin 748, page 125
- The use of coal with a low ash fusion temperature (1204°C, or 2200°F) caused frequent clinkering on the grate during initial tests. The clinkering stopped when the coal was replaced with one having a higher fusion temperature […]1981, David W. Schultz, Municipal solid waste, resource recovery: Proceedings of the seventh annual research symposium at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 16-18
Noun (2)
clinker (plural clinkers)
Noun (3)
clinker (uncountable)
- A style of boatbuilding using overlapping planks.
- clinker planking; a clinker dinghy
- Synonyms:
- lapstrake
Proper noun capitalized: Clinker
Clinker
- A surname.
clinker meaning in Tamil and Urdu
clinker in Tamil
- கீச்சுக்கிட்டம், இசைக்கல், உருண்டைக்கல், செங்கற்றூள், திரள்கட்டு, உருக்காங்கட்டி
clinker in Urdu
- گھنٹی ٹنٹنانا
Synonyms of clinker
Forms of clinker
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | clinkers |
| alternative form (dated) | klinker |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | clinkers |
| present participle | clinkering |
| past participle | clinkered |
| past | clinkered |
Origin of clinker
From Dutch klinkaerd, later klinker, from klinken (“to ring, resound”).
From clink + -er.
From clincher.
Words formed from clinker
Phrases with clinker
Words that rhyme with clinker
Questions about clinker
- What does clinker mean?
- Clinker means a very hard brick used for paving customarily made in the Netherlands.
- What is clinker in Tamil?
- Clinker in Tamil is கீச்சுக்கிட்டம், இசைக்கல், உருண்டைக்கல். See Clinker meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is clinker?
- Clinker can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce clinker?
- Clinker is pronounced /ˈklɪŋkə(ɹ)/ (UK).
- What is the plural of clinker?
- The plural of clinker is clinkers.
Words near clinker in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: clinker (page history and authors); Clinker (page history and authors); clinker (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); clinker (Urdu Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-clinker.wav.
Cite this entry: “clinker.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clinker. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.