Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An iron hook.
  • noun The arm.
  • noun A club with an iron head used in playing golf.
  • To clutch; snatch; seize; catch, as by a hook.
  • To steal.
  • To take one's arm; link together.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Better say naething about the laird, my man, and tell me instead, what sort of a chap ye are that are sae ready to cleik in with an auld gaberlunzie fiddler?

    Redgauntlet 2008

  • Then the Devil took his sulphured cleik and mightily he swung,

    Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Thomas L. Masson 1900

  • Bean Lean being aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, to hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding dovering hame (wi 'the malt rather abune the meal), and with the help of his gillies he gat him into the hills with the speed of light, and the first place he wakened in was the cove of

    The Waverley 1877

  • Better say naething about the laird, my man, and tell me instead, what sort of a chap ye are that are sae ready to cleik in with an auld gaberlunzie fiddler?

    Redgauntlet Walter Scott 1801

  • Bean Lean, being aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, to hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding dovering hame (wi 'the malt rather abune the meal), and with the help of his gillies he gat him into the hills with the speed of light, and the first place he wakened in was the cove of Uaimh an

    Waverley — Volume 1 Walter Scott 1801

  • Bean Lean, being aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, to hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding dovering hame (wi 'the malt rather abune the meal), and with the help of his gillies he gat him into the hills with the speed of light, and the first place he wakened in was the cove of Uaimh an

    Waverley — Complete Walter Scott 1801

  • In the testimony of which we have put the common seal of our city hereunto, at the request of the honourable Mr. Charles Bertie, envoy extraor - dinary from his Majesty of Great Britain to the Electors, and other Princes of Germany, at his passage through this city; and have caused our cleik to sign the same in the place of nut secretary lately deceased.

    Collins's peerage of England; genealogical, biographical, and historical 1812

  • Now, Donald Bean Lean, being aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, to hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding dovering hame (wi 'the malt rather abune the meal), and with the help of his gillies he gat him into the hills with the speed of light, and the first place he wakened in was the cove of Uaimh an Ri.

    Waverley Walter Scott 1801

  • Now, Donald Bean Lean, being aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, to hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding DOVERING hame (wi 'the malt rather abune the meal), and with the help of his gillies he gat him into the hills with the speed of light, and the first place he wakened in was the cove of Uaimh an Ri.

    Waverley: or, 'Tis sixty years since Walter Scott 1801

  • "Donald Bean Lean, being aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding

    The Proverbs of Scotland Alexander Hislop 1836

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  • Cleiking the Devil - During the third week of August, traditional games, a bonfire in which the devil is burned in effigy, and the symbolic release of a flock of pigeons by St. Ronan make up part of the Cleikum ceremony, which was founded in the 1820s in Innerleithen, Peeblesshire, Scotland, by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, poet James Hogg, and John Lockhart. In this carryover of the St. Ronan Border Games, a boy is chosen to impersonate seventh-century monk St. Ronan, who is remembered for having bested the devil by educating the laity. An elaborate ritual depicts the saint using his crozier, a bishop's curved staff, to grab a boy who represents the cloven-hoofed prince of darkness, an action known locally as "cleiking." Cleik has been used in a number of related Scottish idioms, such as cleik the cunyie, to lay hold of money, and cleik-in-the-back, back pain that feels like a hook catching one.

    April 22, 2018