clack

plural clacks

1. An abrupt, sharp sound, especially one made by two hard objects colliding repetitively; a sound midway between a click and a clunk.
2. Anything that causes a clacking noise, such as the clapper of a mill, or a clack valve.
3. Chatter; prattle.

   whose chief intent is to vaunt his spiritual clack

   1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London

4. colloquialThe tongue.

present singular third person clacks · participle present clacking · participle past clacked · past clacked

1. intransitiveTo make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.

   We heard Mr. Hodson's whip clacking on the shoulders of the poor little wretches.

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 8, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC

   1 more example

   [He] walked quite jauntily across the courtyard to the distant door, his sandals clacking against the marble.

   1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 52

2. transitiveTo cause to make a sudden, sharp noise, or succession of noises; to click.
3. To chatter or babble; to utter rapidly without consideration.

   There is a generation of men, whose unweighed custome makes them clack out any thing their heedleſs fancy ſprings

   1623, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political

   1 more example

   The women bunched up in little droves and let their tongues clack, and the men herded together and passed a jug around and, to tell the truth, let their tongues clack too.

   1953, Janice Holt Giles, The Kentuckians

4. UKTo cut the sheep's mark off (wool), to make the wool weigh less and thus yield less duty.
5. datedDated form of cluck.

   Only the chickens clacked at the Saturday quiet and fat mouse-minded cats licked whiskers on the empty steps.

   1934, Gladys Bagg Taber, Late Climbs the Sun, page 30

   1 more example

   We drive on between meadows of mown grass, through a pergola of vines, and so to an orchard of peaches, apples, and pears and a hen colony housed in neat modern cottages, the chickens clacking and scratching away […]

   1964, Frances Margaret Cheadle McGuire, Gardens of Italy, page 57

plural Clacks

1. A surname.