Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A clamp or vise.
  • noun Any of various usually burrowing marine and freshwater bivalve mollusks chiefly of the subclass Heterodonta, including members of the families Veneridae and Myidae, many of which are edible.
  • noun The soft edible body of such a mollusk.
  • noun Informal A close-mouthed person, especially one who can keep a secret.
  • noun Slang A dollar.
  • intransitive verb To hunt for clams.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A clamp (see clamp); in plural, forceps, pincers.
  • noun A stick laid across a stream of water to serve as a bridge.
  • noun A rat-trap.
  • noun Clamminess; the state or quality of having or conveying a cold moist feeling.
  • To smear; daub; clog with glutinous or viscous matter.
  • To stick; glue.
  • To be glutinous; be cold and moist; be clammy.
  • To press together; compress; pinch.
  • To clog up; close by pressure; shut.
  • To castrate, as a bull or ram, by compression.
  • To rumple; crease.
  • To snatch.
  • To pinch with hunger; emaciate; starve.
  • To stick close.
  • To grope or grasp ineffectually.
  • To die of hunger; starve.
  • noun A ringing of all the bells of a chime simultaneously; a clamor; a clangor.
  • To sound all the bells in a chime simultaneously.
  • See extract.
  • noun A name given in different localities to different bivalve mollusks.
  • noun Same as clamp, n., 1.
  • Sticky; viscous; clammy (which see).
  • Moist; thawing, as ice.
  • Vile; mean; unworthy.
  • To gather clams; as, to go clamming.
  • noun An obsolete variant of clamb, old preterit of climb.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb rare To be moist or glutinous; to stick; to adhere.
  • noun rare Claminess; moisture.
  • noun A crash or clangor made by ringing all the bells of a chime at once.
  • verb To produce, in bell ringing, a clam or clangor; to cause to clang.
  • transitive verb To clog, as with glutinous or viscous matter.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A bivalve mollusk of many kinds, especially those that are edible. The name is said to have been given originally to the Tridacna gigas, a huge East Indian bivalve.
  • noun (Ship Carp.) Strong pinchers or forceps.
  • noun (Mech.) A kind of vise, usually of wood.
  • noun See under Blood.

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

  • verb To produce, in bellringing, a clam or clangor; to cause to clang.
  • noun A bivalve mollusk of many kinds, especially those that are edible; as, the long clam (Mya arenaria), the quahog or round clam (Venus mercenaria), the sea clam or hen clam (Spisula solidissima), and other species of the United States. The name is said to have been given originally to the Tridacna gigas, a huge East Indian bivalve.
  • noun Strong pincers or forceps.
  • noun A kind of vise, usually of wood.
  • noun US, slang A dollar (usually used in the plural). Possibly originating from the term wampum.
  • noun slang, derogatory A Scientologist.
  • verb To dig for clams.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English clam, clamm, bond, fetter.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From obsolete clam-shell, shell that clamps, clam, from clam.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • clam?

    October 7, 2007

  • Clam.

    October 8, 2007

  • Clam!

    October 8, 2007

  • ...clam...

    October 9, 2007

  • Clam-I-Am!

    October 9, 2007

  • scallop

    October 9, 2007

  • It will be lost on such an intellectual clam as you.

    --Mark Twain, 1871, Sketches

    November 8, 2007

  • In jazz music, to hit a clam = to play a wrong note (It. stecca).

    ...March of '76 was Thelonious Monk. There was a guy on the air doing that standard gibberish about Monk: "and Monk, playing the wrong notes on the piano, is able to create this kind of music....". Anyway, Monk called the Columbia switchboard, and the Columbia switchboard got in touch with me and said that Thelonious Monk had called to say that we should tell the guy on the air, "The piano ain't got no wrong notes."

    (A History of WKCR's Jazz Programming: An interview with Phil Schaap. Conducted, transcribed, and edited by Evan Spring. October 5th, 1992.

    Source)

    July 7, 2009

  • im eating clam chowder at this very moment

    August 18, 2009

  • 'Happy as a clam at high tide' is an American East Coast (Maine) expression - meaning is clear, just picture the wide-smiling shell...

    Used by Sylvia Plath in Letters Home (December 14, 1962) - "here I am, in my favourite house in my favourite neighborhood, happy as a clam!"

    March 21, 2011