clag

From Middle English claggen, probably of Scandinavian origin. Compare Swedish klägg and Old English clǣġ.

• IPA^(key): /klæɡ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æɡ

clag (uncountable)

1. A glue or paste made from starch.
2. Low cloud, fog or smog.
   • 1993, Harry Furniss, Memoirs - One: The Flying Game:

     The sky was thick with dirty gray clag

   • 2001, Colin Castle, Lucky Alex: The Career of Group Captain A.M. Jardine Afc, CD, Seaman and Airman:

     This programme included practice interceptions, simulator training, day flying, night flying, clag flying -- in addition to […] [a footnote states that clag flying was Air Force slang for foul weather flying.]

   • 2004, David A. Barr, One Lucky Canuck: An Autobiography:

     We went along in the clag for what seemed like an eternity [a footnote defines clag as low cloud cover]

3. (railway slang) Unburned carbon (smoke) from a steam or diesel locomotive, or multiple unit.
4. (motor racing slang) Bits of rubber which are shed from tires during a race and collect off the racing line, especially on the outside of corners (cf. marbles).

   He ran wide in the corner, hit the clag and spun off.

• claggy

clag (third-person singular simple present clags, present participle clagging, simple past and past participle clagged)

1. (obsolete) To encumber
   • c. 1620, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Heywood's Art of Love: The First Complete English Translation of Ovid's Ars Amatoria:

     As when the orchard boughes are clag'd with fruite

   • 1725, Edward Taylor, Preparatory Meditations:

     Can such draw to me/My stund affections all with Cinders clag'd

2. To stick, like boots in mud
   • 1999: "A queen of a Santee kitchen, pre-war", quoted by Mary Alston Read Simms in the Introduction to Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821-1909

     Wash the rice well in two waters, if you don't wash 'em, 'e will clag [clag means get sticky] and put 'em in a pot of well-salted boiling water.

• GLAC

From Old Irish cloc.

clag m (genitive singular cluig, plural cluig)

1. bell

• shamyr chluig, thie cluig (“belfry”)

From Old Irish cloc.

clag m (genitive singular cluig, plural cluig)

1. bell

• beum-cluig