clam

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A sea animal with a soft body inside two hard shells, often eaten as food.

   We dug for clams along the beach at low tide.

2. 2
   verb

   To dig for clams in the sand near the sea.

   I like to clam when I am at the beach.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Clam originally meant “a bond” or “something that holds tight” in Old English and later “a clamp”; it probably shares its source with clamp. The shellfish name appeared in the early 16th century, apparently referring to its tightly closed shell. A separate dialect verb clam, “be sticky” or “stick,” is related to clay and gave rise to clammy; the phrase clam up is usually linked to the shellfish, though an isolated example from about 1350 may instead reflect the sticky sense.

From Middle English clam (“pincers, vice, clamp”), from Old English clam (“bond, fetter, grip, grasp”), from Proto-West Germanic *klammjan (“press, squeeze together”). The sense “dollar” may allude to wampum. The sense "Scientologist" alludes to the Scientologist belief that human thetans (souls) previously inhabited clams.

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary