Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling Clementine!
You are lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, Clementine.
(See also forty-niners.)< French clémentine (1902), said to be named after a Father Clément, who developed the fruit near Oran; see -ine 1
A clementine is a small, orange, seedless citrus fruit. Clementines are usually easy to peel and section, and they taste very sweet. Clementines are a deep orange-colored hybrid fruit, a combination of the mandarin and the sweet orange, similar in size to a tangerine. The history of the clementine includes what was probably an accidental invention, and an introduction to California in 1914. The inadvertent inventor of the clementine was Father Clément Rodier, who ran an Algerian orphanage, and for whom the fruit was named.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And arm yourself with simple pantry staples that you can graze on lazily, ideally while peeling a clementine and thumbing a paperback.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
Orange is being mixed with mango, mandarins and clementine juice.
From BBC ● Oct. 21, 2025
Like for nervous people, “fidget toys” — sensory objects to fondle — help ground you, Darragh says, gripping a clementine.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2023
This one has the zest of a clementine for a hint of fruitiness that says "there's more to me than meets the eye."
From Salon ● Feb. 11, 2022
Lola had been complaining about his mother’s fruit buying for the past three days, so he knew his mom was trying to prove a point by putting every mango and clementine to good use.
From "Hello, Universe" by Erin Entrada Kelly
It is the result of “just streamlining these workflows and knitting someone’s journey together end to end,” says Clementine Jacoby, chief executive officer of Recidiviz.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
Clementine Douglas, who will be performing on the main stage with a live band, tells Newsbeat she has seen dance music emerge "out of the underground and go more mainstream".
From BBC ● May 22, 2026
A 1940s folk painting by Clementine Hunter radiates relaxation, its central man unwinding with a drink, his feet kicked up on a stump.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026
"For the average consumer, it is impossible to understand that TotalEnergies is actually expanding fossil fuel production," Clementine Baldon, a lawyer for the NGOs, said at a hearing in June.
From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2025
The Hornet Girls: Courtney Barrett, Clementine Cohen, Lulu Mendes, and Heather somebody are propped on the big rock beside the trailhead when Brian and I come out of the woods the next afternoon.
From "I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson
The Western folk ballad “Clementine” appeared in more than two dozen known 19th-century song collections, with an estimated cumulative circulation in the tens of thousands.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 1, 2026
With its breathy tonal atmosphere and wispy story, “Clementine” bobs along on the surface, with nowhere particularly interesting to go.
From Washington Post ● May 6, 2020
The books are a spinoff of Pennypacker’s seven “Clementine” books.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 2, 2016
When I finished the “Clementine” books, I was bereft.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 2, 2016
Luckily, the officials in the booth also had the rolls in Marathi, the local language, and there, her name was close enough to “Clementine” that they were willing to accept her photo ID.
From New York Times ● Mar. 13, 2014
In South Korea, a country slightly larger than Indiana, rising temperatures are pushing the production of fruits such as apples and clementines northward as well as boosting the commercial cultivation of tropical fruits.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2024
As expected, the presence of an image was more important in determining consumer choice than whether the handwash was scented with clementines or pears.
From Science Daily ● May 2, 2024
And in other parts of Italy, farmer associations have said that heat waves, floods and hailstones the size of clementines damaged local melon, watermelon, cherry and wine grape crops.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 31, 2023
It was late last summer that Heuermann, sweaty and wearing a dingy T-shirt and shorts, was spotted at the Massapequa Park Whole Foods pilfering clementines from a bowl put out for children.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 15, 2023
On the dining table, there is a pepper mill, a saltcellar, bright, clear-skinned clementines arranged in a bowl.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
