Word.ws English Dictionary

like the clappers

like the clappers prepositional phrase: very hard or very rapidly.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (UK, informal, simile) Very hard or very rapidly.
    • After hurling their insults, they ran like the clappers to get away.
    • And when it started off they first studied them, and of course they went like the clappers to prove what they could do, which was the thing they shouldn't be doing because it was a study, and of course, they've got to work like the clappers all the time once it came into operation.1998, Diana Gittins, Madness in its Place: Narratives of Severalls Hospital, 1913-1997
    Synonyms:
    like the clappers of fuck, like the clappers of hell

Synonyms of like the clappers

  • like the clappers of fuck
  • like the clappers of hell

Origin of like the clappers

Partridge says: "Possibly rhyming slang for 'clappers of a bell', 'hell'."

Questions about like the clappers

What does like the clappers mean?
Like the clappers means very hard or very rapidly.
What part of speech is like the clappers?
Like the clappers is a prepositional phrase.

Words near like the clappers in the dictionary

  1. like terms
  2. like that
  3. like the back end of a bus
  4. like the bottom of a birdcage
  5. like the cat that got the cream
  6. like the clappers
  7. like the devil
  8. like the man said
  9. like the man says
  10. like the new time
  11. like the sound of one's own voice

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: like the clappers (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-like the clappers.ogg.

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