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
Yet it too appeared to have melted away, with no sign of recent activity at the base save for a discarded uniform and a peeled clementine on a desk in the command office.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 9, 2024
The traditional velvet cap features embroidered initials, button and tassel and a hand-embroidered clementine in honour of his wife Clementine.
From BBC • Mar. 26, 2024
Through metal bars, aid workers on the U.S. side pass through rolls of toilet paper, bags of clementine oranges, water bottles, packages of toothbrushes.
From New York Times • May 12, 2023
Virgil studied his own hands as they worked away at the peel on a clementine.
From "Hello, Universe" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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.
