clack

American  

[klak] / klæk /

verb (used without object)

1. to make a quick, sharp sound, or a succession of such sounds, as by striking or cracking.

   The loom clacked busily under her expert hands.

2. to talk rapidly and continually or with sharpness and abruptness; chatter.

3. to cluck or cackle.

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verb (used with object)

1. to utter by clacking.

2. to cause to clack.

   He clacked the cup against the saucer.

noun

1. a clacking sound.

2. something that clacks, as a rattle.

3. rapid, continual talk; chatter.

clack British  

/ klæk /

verb

1. to make or cause to make a sound like that of two pieces of wood hitting each other

2. (intr) to jabber

3. a less common word for cluck

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noun

1. a short sharp sound

2. a person or thing that produces this sound

3. chatter

4. Also called: clack valve.  a simple nonreturn valve using either a hinged flap or a ball

Etymology

Origin of clack

1200–50; Middle English clacken; imitative

Example Sentences

“I like a man who drinks tomato juice. So earthy,” Raven says over the music and the clack of billiard balls.

From Literature

There's a reassuring clacking as the individual letters hit the blank white page in quick, noisy succession:

From BBC

“Another one for the vocabulary list, I see, Nell,” my aunt said with a sigh, the railroad tracks clacking below our feet as we rolled east across Indiana.

From Literature

The camera cuts to Elizabeth’s actual surroundings: a New York City apartment, where the radiator clacks and hisses in place of a crackling fire, and the view is brick, not snow-dusted pasture.

From Salon

Imagine “the incessant clack of cowboy boots against the cobblestones” that could have been, he thinks.

From The Wall Street Journal