Word.ws English Dictionary

clunch

clunch noun: a traditional building material mostly made of chalk or clay.

Noun

clunch (countable and uncountable, plural clunches)

  1. (UK) A traditional building material mostly made of chalk or clay.
    • clunch pit
    • The manor-house stands near the church, and is a large convenient old house built of clunch, stone, &c. with good gardens and walks adjoining to the river side.1736, Charles Parkin, History of Norfolk, volume 6

Verb

clunch (third-person singular simple present clunches, present participle clunching, simple past and past participle clunched)

  1. (transitive) To grasp firmly; clench.
    • As William Wallace felt the bank giving away under his feet, he clunched the other boy firmly by the arm.1920, Nephi Anderson, The Boys of Springtown, page 15

Forms of clunch

Noun
pluralclunches
Verb
third-person singular presentclunches
present participleclunching
past participleclunched
pastclunched

Origin of clunch

Perhaps related to clump. Compare hump, hunch; lump, lunch, etc.

Alteration of clench.

Questions about clunch

What does clunch mean?
Clunch means a traditional building material mostly made of chalk or clay.
What part of speech is clunch?
Clunch can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of clunch?
The plural of clunch is clunches.

Words near clunch in the dictionary

  1. clumsinesses
  2. clumsing
  3. clumsy
  4. Clun
  5. Clunbury
  6. clunch
  7. clunched
  8. clunches
  9. clunching
  10. Clunderwen
  11. Clune

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clunch (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:

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