clamp
Pluralclamps
Pluralclamps
Formsclamps, clamping, clamped
- 1A brace, band, or clasp used to hold things together or strengthen a joint.
The carpenter used a clamp to hold the joint steady as the adhesive cured.
He fixed several clamps along the edge of the workbench.
Note
The tool word at the root of the whole family, borrowed from Middle Dutch clamp, klampe, 'a clamp, hook', and traced to a Proto-Germanic word for a clasp or cramp. German Klampe still covers both 'clamp' and 'cleat', and Norwegian klamp means 'clamp'. Every gripping, fastening and heaping use of clamp descends from it. The heavy footstep only shares the spelling, since that word imitates a sound.
- 2To fasten something in place or join things together with a clamp, or as if with one.
He clamped the pipe firmly to the bracket.
The jaws clamp shut around the workpiece.
Similarfasten, fix, secure, clip
Oppositerelease, loosen, unfasten
Note
The verb works in two constructions. With an object, someone fastens a thing to or onto something else: clamp the pipe to the bracket. Without one, the gripping part itself closes, as when the jaws clamp shut. Shut, together and to are the words it most often pairs with. The 'as if with a clamp' reach lets it describe anything that closes hard on what it holds.
- 3
- 4A surgical instrument used to temporarily close off a blood vessel or duct.
The surgeon applied a clamp to the severed vein before suturing.
Vascular clamps must be released slowly to avoid a sudden surge of blood.
Note
Surgery's version of the gripping tool. Typically its ratcheted handles lock the jaws so a vessel or hollow organ stays occluded while the surgeon works, controlling bleeding or isolating a structure. Its defining feature is that it comes off again. A clamp is applied and later released, which is what separates it from a suture or tie meant to close a vessel for good.
- 5A device locked onto a car's wheel to immobilize it until the vehicle is towed or a fine is paid.
He returned to find a clamp on his rear wheel and a penalty notice on the windscreen.
Council officers fit clamps to vehicles parked illegally near the high street.
Similarboot
Note
In British English the workshop clamp has a roadside job: the same gripping idea as the holding brace, fixed to a wheel so the car cannot move. The noun has a matching verb, so a driver comes back to find the car clamped, as in the immobilizing verb. Wheel clamp is the fuller name, and it is the clearer choice wherever the bare word might suggest a carpenter's tool.
- 6To immobilize a vehicle by fitting a locking device to one of its wheels.
Wardens clamped three cars outside the stadium before noon.
They threatened to clamp any vehicle blocking the entrance.
Similarboot, immobilize
- 7A batten fixed across the grain at the end of a board to hold it flat.
The breadboard's clamp runs crosswise to stop the boards from cupping.
Cabinetmakers attach clamps to keep wide tabletops flat over time.
Note
A joiner's sense. The batten runs across the end grain of a wide board so the board cannot cup or warp. The same piece is known as a breadboard end, after the cutting board where it is most familiar. It is fixed so that the panel can still expand and contract across its width.
- 8To force a numeric value to stay within a set range, replacing any value outside the range with the nearest limit.
The shader clamps each color channel to the range zero through one.
Always clamp user input before passing it to the array index.
Similarlimit, constrain, restrict, bound, cap
Note
A verb for programmers and graphics engineers. Values inside the range pass through untouched, values below it become the minimum, and values above it become the maximum. It takes to with the range: clamp each channel to zero through one. In rendering it often appears in the passive, as when Jason Zink, Matt Pettineo and Jack Hoxley (2016) write that 'the depth range is clamped' before a comparison.
- 9A circuit that fixes the positive or negative peaks of a signal at a set value by shifting the signal's DC level.
The clamp holds the video signal's blanking level at a fixed voltage.
Designers place a clamp before the amplifier to set the baseline.
Note
Electronics uses the word for a level-setter rather than a grip. The circuit is typically built from a diode, a capacitor and a bias source. It moves the whole waveform up or down so that one set of peaks sits at a reference voltage, leaving the waveform's shape intact. That is the opposite of the programmer's clamp, which cuts off whatever strays out of range.
- 10A compact, covered pile of root vegetables or silage stored outdoors for a short period, protected with straw, earth, or both.
Each fall the farm stored its beets in a long clamp behind the barn.
Sugar-beet clamps line the field edges before the factory collects them.
Note
A farmyard heap that keeps produce rather than burning it. Roots or silage are piled close and covered with straw, earth or both, which shields them from frost and wet until they are used or sold. It shares its shape with the heap for firing bricks. English also once had a verb for building one, clamping roots in earth.
- 11A heap of material stacked together with fuel and burned in a controlled way, used to fire bricks, roast ore, or make charcoal.
The bricks were fired in a clamp built from the green bricks themselves.
Charcoal burners tended their clamps day and night to control the heat.
Note
Firing without a kiln: the pile itself is the oven, and the fire works slowly through it. Barry Cunliffe's Danebury Hillfort (1983) describes pots heaped, covered with wood chippings and brushwood, and domed over with turves. A few air vents were left around the sides before the clamp was fired. A clamp is fired as a kiln is, and the same word serves for bricks, ore, coal and charcoal.
Less common meanings
- 12A heavy footfall; the sound of someone treading heavily.
The clamp of the watchman's boots warned the thieves.
Each clamp of his boots shook the wooden floor.
Similartramp, clump, clomp, thud, tread
Note
A second, unrelated word that imitates the sound it names: the dull thud of a boot coming down hard. Its register is dated, and clump, clomp and tramp now do the everyday work. It suits narration with an old-fashioned feel better than ordinary conversation.
- 13To walk with heavy, clumsy, noisy steps; to clump or clomp.
The workers clamped across the bare floorboards in their boots.
the policeman with clamping feet
1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis.Similarclump, clomp, stomp, tramp, stamp
Note
Thackeray's The History of Pendennis (1848–50) gives a policeman "clamping feet", and the participle used as an adjective is a natural home for the word. The verb is intransitive: people clamp across, down or along a floor, but never clamp something. It shares the dated ring of the sound-born noun, and clump and clomp are the current words.
- 14To cover stored vegetables, such as roots, with a protective layer of earth.
Cottagers clamped their turnips against the winter cold.
They clamp the beets in autumn and uncover them as needed.
Note
An obsolete British farming verb, the action behind the covered store of roots. Turnips or beets were clamped by heaping them and banking earth over them. Because the verb has dropped out of ordinary use, a modern writer is better served by "store in a clamp". The verb itself belongs to historical description.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of clamp apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origins
This comes from Middle Dutch "clamp" or "klampe" ("a clamp, hook"), from Proto-Germanic "*klampō" ("clamp, clasp, cramp"). It is related to Middle Low German "klampe" ("hook, clasp"), German "Klampfe" or "Klampe" ("clamp, cleat"), and Norwegian "klamp" ("clamp").
This word is imitative in origin, formed to echo a sound.