clapper

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈklæpɚ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æpə(ɹ)

clap +‎ -er

clapper (plural clappers)

1. One who claps; a person who applauds by clapping the hands.
2. An object so suspended inside a bell that it may hit the bell and cause it to ring; a clanger or tongue.
3. A wooden mechanical device used as a scarecrow; bird-scaring rattle, a wind-rattle or a wind-clapper.
   • 1896, Sabine Baring-Gould, Arminell, a social romance, Ch. 37:

     "Sir, sir! folks' tongues go like the clappers in the fields to drive away the blackbirds. A very little wind makes 'em rattle wonderfully."

4. A clapstick (musical instrument).
5. (sewing) A pounding block.
6. The chattering damsel of a mill.
7. (ice hockey) A slapshot
8. (cinematography) The hinged part of a clapperboard, used to synchronise images and soundtrack, or the clapperboard itself.
9. (slang) A person's tongue.
   • 1683, S. P., The Dutch Rogue, Or, Gusman of Amsterdam, page 238:

     Emilia 'tis true could use her clapper with great Dexterity, but he had the same advantages against her, which this had against him; Olimpia 's Tongue was also well hung but she ever had reason on her side, which he with reason could never either blame or oppose, and by both these came his Fortune: […]

• (musical instrument): clapstick, musicstick

clapper (third-person singular simple present clappers, present participle clappering, simple past and past participle clappered)

1. (transitive) To ring a bell by pulling a rope attached to the clapper.
   • 1903, Baron Edmund Beckett Grimthorpe, A rudimentary treatise on clocks and watches and bells:

     It is still necessary to warn clergymen against allowing the lazy and pernicious practice of 'clappering,' i.e. tying the bell-rope to the clapper, and pulling it instead of the bell.

2. To make a repetitive clapping sound; to clatter.
3. Of birds, to repeatedly strike the mandibles together.

Borrowed from French clapier.

clapper (plural clappers)

1. (obsolete) A rabbit burrow.
   • 1557 February 13, Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie., London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC; republished London: […] Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […], 1810, →OCLC:

     Poore cunnie so bagged,
     Is soone overlagged
     Plash burrow, set clapper,
     For dog is a snapper

“clapper”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• clapper bridge (has a distinct etymology)

• crapple

• Audio

  (file)

clapper

1. to click (the tongue)

• clappement

• “clapper”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.