Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A portable bell used by the early Scotch Christians, apparently in the service of the mass, and also carried before the host when taken out of the church, and before a dead body when carried to the grave.
  • noun A clot; a mass of sticky or adhesive matter: as, a clag of mud on one's shoe.
  • noun A clog, encumbrance, or burden, as on property.
  • To clog; encumber with something adhesive, as clay.
  • To stick or adhere.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A glue or paste made from starch.
  • noun Low cloud, fog or smog.
  • noun Railway slang Unburned carbon (smoke) from a diesel locomotive or multiple unit.
  • noun Bits of rubber from tires collecting along the circuit.
  • verb obsolete To encumber
  • verb To stick, like boots in mud

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Scandinavian: klag: mud

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Examples

  • Beyond the tarred roads, many of the red-soil tracks have been officially closed because in the rain they turn to clag.

    Travel: Dickens down under Thomas Keneally 2010

  • I hated tanking in the clag and I dreaded the vertigo.

    A Nightmare’s Prayer Michael Franzak 2010

  • We grew immense beards, we were buried in storms of sleet, our bloodshot eyes sank deep into our heads, our uniforms disappeared beneath an encrustation of icy clag, our hands were torn as though by cats, and our fingers curled up into leaden clubs.

    Captain Corelli's Mandolin De Bernieres, Louis 2003

  • It teuk th 'braiksmin half e shift te clag thim up wi plaistors.

    The Row Between the Cages 2000

  • Far off are the cling-clag-cling of chimes and the swell-and-fall murmur of a multitude en fête, so that subtly you feel the gray old town, with its walls, the crowded marketplace, the decent peasant crowd, the booths, the mellow church building with its bells, the warm, dust-moted sun.

    On Lying Awake at Night 1921

  • Beyond the tarred roads, many of the red-soil tracks have been officially closed because in the rain they turn to clag.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • The SF Bible has a Full metal Jacket, to be kept in top left pocket, next to your spare mags, compass, i pod, clasp knife, maps. notebook and pencil, china graph, chewing gum, and all the other clag you keep in there.

    Army Rumour Service 2009

  • You dirty cow, I will pop round with my angle grinder and rip out your clag.

    Army Rumour Service 2009

  • That will teach me to read a thread fully, had I have known you were joining the PW's, I would have said, ask for a transfer, you will be spending the rest of your career listening to cats being strangled and eating pig clag for brekky otherwise.

    Army Rumour Service 2009

  • The SF Bible has a Full metal Jacket, to be kept in top left pocket, next to your spare mags, compass, i pod, clasp knife, maps. notebook and pencil, china graph, chewing gum, and all the other clag you keep in there.

    Army Rumour Service 2009

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