clam

CEFRB1

/klæm/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A sea animal with a shell that lives in sand or mud.

  2. 02

    verb

    To stop talking and become quiet.

Examples

  • I am as happy as a clam.

  • The largest kind of clam is the giant clam.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5

Also pronounced

  • [kleəm] ~ [klɛəm]
  • /klam/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A kind of vise, usually of wood.

  2. A type of strong pincers or forceps.

  3. A bivalve mollusk of many kinds, especially those that are edible; for example soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria), hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria), sea clams or hen clams (Spisula solidissima), and other species, possibly originally applied to clams of species Tridacna gigas, a huge East Indian bivalve.

More examples

In context

  • Tom is happy as a clam.

  • Use a clam to make a quick or temporary change to the inboard/outboard...The clam sits against the outer face of the collar.

  • Those sneakers cost me fifty clams!

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

She found a fresh blank buried in the wet sand near the tide.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English clam (“pincers, vice, clamp”), from Old English clam (“bond, fetter, grip, grasp”), from Proto-West Germanic *klammjan (“press, squeeze together”). The sense “dollar” may allude to wampum. The sense "Scientologist" alludes to the Scientologist belief that human thetans (souls) previously inhabited clams.