clamp

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

• noun Any of various devices used to join, grip, support, or compress mechanical or structural parts.
• noun Any of various tools with opposing, often adjustable sides or parts for bracing objects or holding them together.
• transitive verb To fasten, grip, or support with or as if with a clamp.
• transitive verb To establish by authority; impose.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To burn (bricks) in a clamp. See clamp, n., 1.
• To cover (potatoes, beets, turnips, etc.) with earth for winter keeping.
• noun An obsolete form of clam.
• To tread heavily; tramp.
• noun A heavy footstep or tread; a tramp.
• To make or mend in a clumsy manner; patch.
• To patch or trump up (a charge or an accusation).
• noun An instrument of wood, metal, or other rigid material, used to hold anything, or to hold or fasten two or more things together by pressure so as to keep them in the same relative position.
• noun plural The hinged plates over the trunnions of a gun: generally called cap-squares.
• noun One of a pair of movable cheeks of lead or copper covering the jaws of a vise, and enabling it to grasp without bruising.
• noun In botany, in the mycelium of fungi, a nearly semicircular cellular protuberance, like a short branch, which springs from one cell of a filament close to a transverse wall, and is closely applied to the lateral wall of the adjoining cell. Each cell coalesces with the clamp, and thus an open passage is formed between the two cells. Also called clamp-cell.
• noun plural Andirons.
• To fasten with a clamp or clamps; fix a clamp on.
• noun A stack of bricks laid up for burning, in such a manner as to leave spaces between them for the access of the fire, and imperviously inclosed: called a brick-clamp, in distinction from a brick-kiln.
• noun A pile of ore for roasting, or of coal for coking.
• noun A mound of earth lined with straw thrown up over potatoes, beets, turnips, etc., to keep them through the winter.
• noun A large fire made of underwood.
• noun A heap of peat or turf for fuel.
• noun A clamp-shell, Tridacna; a chama.

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

• intransitive verb To tread heavily or clumsily; to clump.
• transitive verb To fasten with a clamp or clamps; to apply a clamp to; to place in a clamp.
• transitive verb engraving To cover, as vegetables, with earth.
• noun A heavy footstep; a tramp.
• noun Something rigid that holds fast or binds things together; a piece of wood or metal, used to hold two or more pieces together.
• noun An instrument with a screw or screws by which work is held in its place or two parts are temporarily held together.
• noun (Joinery) A piece of wood placed across another, or inserted into another, to bind or strengthen.
• noun One of a pair of movable pieces of lead, or other soft material, to cover the jaws of a vise and enable it to grasp without bruising.
• noun (Shipbuilding) A thick plank on the inner part of a ship's side, used to sustain the ends of beams.
• noun A mass of bricks heaped up to be burned; or of ore for roasting, or of coal for coking.
• noun obsolete A mollusk. See Clam.
• noun nails used to fasten on clamps in ships.

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

• noun A brace, band, or clasp for strengthening or holding things together.
• verb transitive, intransitive To fasten in place or together with (or as if with) a clamp.
• verb intransitive To tread heavily or clumsily; to clump or clomp.
• verb transitive To hold or grip tightly.
• verb transitive To modify a numeric value so it lies within a specific range.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb fasten or fix with a clamp
• noun a device (generally used by carpenters) that holds things firmly together
• verb impose or inflict forcefully