Word.ws English Dictionary

clowder

/ˈklaʊ̯də/US/ˈklaʊ̯dɚ/

clowder noun: a group of cats or other small felines.

Noun

clowder (plural clowders)

  1. (collective) A group of cats or other small felines.
    • A Brooklyn friend who persists in feeding the host of creatures - including me - who appear at her door will be delighted to know that the most nonchalant recipients of her largesse may be referred to as a clowder of cats.1984 15 April, Nelson Bryant, “Bevies of Terms Befuddle Prides”, in The New York Times
    • Real cat fights are rare in established clowders. So instead of risking serious injury, cats resort to menace and threats.2007, Kathryn Soper, Cat Wrangling Made Easy
    Synonyms:
    clutter, glaring

Synonyms of clowder

Forms of clowder

pluralclowders

Origin of clowder

A variation, recorded since 1801, of clutter, itself from clot, from Old English clott (“round mass, lump”), from Proto-Germanic *klūtaz (hence cognate with Dutch kloot (“ball, testicle”), Danish klods (“a block, lump”) and German Klotz (“lump, block”)).

Questions about clowder

What does clowder mean?
Clowder means a group of cats or other small felines.
What part of speech is clowder?
Clowder is a noun.
How do you pronounce clowder?
Clowder is pronounced /ˈklaʊ̯dɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of clowder?
The plural of clowder is clowders.

Words near clowder in the dictionary

  1. Cloward
  2. Cloward-Piven strategy
  3. Clowards
  4. clowd
  5. clowded
  6. clowder
  7. clowders
  8. clowdier
  9. clowdiest
  10. clowding
  11. clowds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clowder (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-clowder.wav.

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