Word.ws English Dictionary

cluck

UK/klʌk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/klʊk/

cluck noun: the sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks.

Noun

cluck (plural clucks)

  1. The sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks.
  2. Any sound similar to this.
  3. A kind of tongue click used to urge on a horse.
  4. (Texas) A setting hen.

Verb

cluck (third-person singular simple present clucks, present participle clucking, simple past and past participle clucked)

  1. (intransitive) To make low clicking sounds (refers to hens).
    • "I came across him once," he continued, "when he was playing down on the main road to Skaug; there he sat in the middle of the road with a lot of hens around him, I counted seven, and there were more round about in the wood, for I heard them clucking and calling behind every bush."1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 72
    Synonyms:
    chuck
  2. (transitive) To cause (the tongue) to make a clicking sound.
    • My mother clucked her tongue in disapproval.
  3. To call together, or call to follow, as a hen does her chickens.
    • When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood,
      Has clucked thee to the wars and safely home.c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  4. (UK, drug slang) To suffer withdrawal from heroin.

Proper noun capitalized: Cluck

Cluck (plural Clucks)

  1. A surname.

cluck meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

cluck in Hindi

cluck
कुक-कुक kuk-kuk

cluck in Tamil

sound made by hen
கொக் kok
to produce cluck sound
கொக்கரி kokkari

cluck in Urdu

cluck
قوق qauq

cluck in Bengali

মুরগির ডাক, কক্ কক্ শব্দ
More languagesFewer languages
cluck in Malayalam
കൊക്കിക്കൽ, പിടക്കോഴിയുടെ ശബ്ദം
cluck in Tagalog
kurok
cluck in Thai
กุ๊ก ๆ gúk-gúk, กุ๊ก gúk
cluck in Vietnamese
cục cục

Examples of cluck in a sentence

  • One thing that interests me is the clucking, chookish reaction of so many of my friends.
  • She starts to fuss and cluck me into well-being, but I'm not fussable today.
  • Fiddlers and drummers played, boothmen bawled out their wares, animals for sale bleated or lowed or clucked.

All 14 example sentences with cluck

Synonyms of cluck

Forms of cluck

Noun
pluralclucks
alternative formclock
alternative form (dialectal)clutch
Verb
third-person singular presentclucks
present participleclucking
past participleclucked
pastclucked
Proper noun
pluralClucks

Origin of cluck

From Middle English clokken, clocken, from Old English cloccian (“to cluck, make a noise”), from Proto-West Germanic *klukkwōn, from Proto-Germanic *klukkwōną (“to make a sound, cluck”), of imitative origin. Cognate with Scots clok, clock (“to cluck”), Dutch klokken (“to cluck”), Low German klucken (“to cluck”), German glucken (“to cluck”), Danish klukke (“to cluck”), Swedish klucka (“to cluck”), Icelandic klökkva (“to sob, whine, cluck”).

* As a German surname, Americanized from Kluck. * As a Polish and Czech surname, Americanized from Kluk.

Words formed from cluck

Words that rhyme with cluck

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cluck

What does cluck mean?
Cluck means the sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks.
What is cluck in Hindi?
Cluck in Hindi is कुक-कुक (kuk-kuk). See Cluck meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is cluck?
Cluck can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce cluck?
Cluck is pronounced /klʌk/ (UK).
What is the plural of cluck?
The plural of cluck is clucks.

Words near cluck in the dictionary

  1. clubwear
  2. clubwoman
  3. clubwomen
  4. clubzine
  5. clubzines
  6. cluck
  7. cluck one's tongue
  8. clucked
  9. clucked one's tongue
  10. clucker
  11. cluckers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cluck (page history and authors); Cluck (page history and authors); कुक-कुक (Hindi) (page history and authors); قوق (Urdu) (page history and authors); cluck (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cluck (Malayalam 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: En-au-cluck.ogg.

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