clench

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To close tightly: clench one's teeth; clenched my fists in anger.
2. v. To grasp or grip tightly: clenched the steering wheel.
3. v. To clinch (a bolt, for example).
4. v. Nautical To fasten with a clinch.
5. n. A tight grip or grasp.
6. n. Something, such as a mechanical device, that clenches or holds fast.
7. n. Nautical See clinch.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. . To nail or fasten.
2. To secure or fasten, as a nail, staple, or other metallic fastening, by beating down the point after it has been driven through something; rivet.
3. To bring together and set firmly, as the teeth; double up tightly, as the hands.
4. To grasp or seize firmly or convulsively; gripe.
5. Figuratively, to fix or secure by a finishing touch or blow; confirm, as an argument or an action, in some unanswerable or irresistible way; establish firmly.
6. Nautical, to calk slightly with oakum, in anticipation of foul weather.
7. To gripe.
8. To seize or gripe another, or one another, with a firm grasp or hold, as in wrestling: as, the men clenched.
9. To pun.
10. n. A catch; a grip; a persistent clutch.
11. n. That which holds fast or clenches; a clencher (or clincher); a holdfast.
12. n. Nautical, a mode of fastening large ropes, consisting of a half-hitch with the end stopped back to its part by seizings. The outer end of a hawser is bent by a clench to the ring of the anchor.
13. n. A pun or play on words.
14. n. A mode of securing a nail, staple, or the like, by turning over the point and hammering back into the wood the portion bent over.

Wiktionary

1. n. Tight grip.
2. n. engineering A seal that is applied to formed thin-wall bushings.
3. v. To squeeze; to grip or hold tightly.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. See clinch.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. hold in a tight grasp
2. n. a small slip noose made with seizing
3. n. the act of grasping
4. v. squeeze together tightly