Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The incombustible residue, fused into an irregular lump, that remains after the combustion of coal.
- n. A partially vitrified brick or a mass of bricks fused together.
- n. An extremely hard burned brick.
- n. Vitrified matter expelled by a volcano.
- n. Slang A sour note in a musical performance: hit a clinker.
- n. Slang A mistake; a blunder.
- n. Slang Something of inferior quality; a conspicuous failure: a clinker of a show.
- n. Chiefly British Something admirable or first-rate.
- v. To form clinkers in burning.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. That which clinks. Specifically
- n. A metal-heeled shoe used in dancing jigs.
- n. The partly melted and agglutinated residuum of the combustion of coal which has a fusible ash.
- n. A partially vitrified brick or mass of bricks.
- n. A kind of hard Dutch or Flemish brick, used for paving yards and stables.
- n. Vitrified or burnt matter thrown up by a volcano.
- n. A scale of black oxid of iron, formed when iron is heated to redness in the open air.
- n. A deep impression of a horse's or cow's foot; a small puddle so formed.
- To form clinker; become incrusted with clinker.
- n. In cricket, a ball bowled exceedingly well.
Wiktionary
- n. Someone or something that clinks.
- n. in the plural Fetters.
- n. Someone or something that clinches.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A mass composed of several bricks run together by the action of the fire in the kiln.
- n. Scoria or vitrified incombustible matter, formed in a grate or furnace where anthracite coal in used; vitrified or burnt matter ejected from a volcano; slag.
- n. A scale of oxide of iron, formed in forging.
- n. A kind of brick. See Dutch clinker, under Dutch.
WordNet 3.0
- v. clear out the cinders and clinker from
- v. turn to clinker or form clinker under excessive heat in burning
- n. a fragment of incombustible matter left after a wood or coal or charcoal fire
- n. a hard brick used as a paving stone
Etymologies
- From clink + -er. (Wiktionary)
- Obsolete Dutch klinckaerd, from Middle Dutch klinken, to clink; see clink1. N., senses 5 and 6, from clink1. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If clinker is found on the ground, a coal seam is bound to be underneath.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » An Insufficiently Deferential D.C. Circuit?
“The clinker is that the chain decides which Canadian authors they will display and advertise from a list of authors that the six publishers submit.”
“The wreck is described as clinker built, a shipbuilding style which dates back to the Viking era, but used for centuries afterwards.”
“The mix which emerges as lumps at the end of the firing period is known as clinker; this clinker is then cooled and finely ground, and a small quantity of gypsum - which delays setting time - is added, to give Portland cement itself.”
“· A rotary grate discharges the clinker, which is then interground with gypsum in a ball-mill.”
“Here some type of a so-called clinker breaker removes the refuse.”
“Moreover, the clinker, which is of excessively hard character, has to be reduced by means of a crusher to particles sufficiently small to be admitted by the millstones, where it is ground into a fine powder, and becomes the Portland cement of commerce.”
“An enormous dome, made of concrete, holds the pelletize cement, called clinker, that GCC sells around the middle and western United States.”
“When a musician performs a Bach Fugue or Beethoven Sonata, a wrong note is called a "clinker," and can be as jarring as a mixed-up before-and-after ad.”
“Bituminous Coal, while absolutely free from Gases injurious to metals as well as from "clinker," and therefore especially valuable for”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘clinker’.
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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Lees
Items of little or no value that are left behind by physical or biological processes other than passing through an alimentary canal. See also Valse's Leftovers and reesetee's Hogwash! for other tak...
lees, dross, dregs, orts, debris, jetsam, flotsam, rubbage, rubbish, trash, refuse, junk and 130 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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On The Road
Words gathered while reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac.
jailkid, lovething, worklife, longbody, benny, lout, dingledody, intellectualness, huaraches, twink, pisscall, buddhistic and 109 more...
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Words of the Times
Words discovered while reading The New York Times, each with a citation from the paper.
testilying, ghost talk, apneist, solastalgia, izakaya, hooker, telectroscope, airflyte, phomance, bromhidrosis, stinky feet, cupping and 482 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Hilary's List
Just a list of words I like
wellspring, mystery, wonderment, intrinsic, artisan, enchantment, magic, transience, incomplete, impermanent, imperfect, resonance and 163 more...
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you_decide's Words
argot, trenchant, samizdat, elysium, archetype, antediluvian, schadenfreude, corporeal, shinfo, maelstrom, loquacious, stomata and 43 more...
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Machinery Related Words
Words related to steam engines and other machines.
crank, clutch, eccentric, d-valve, stanchion, snifter valve, regulator, injector, ejector, eccentric strap, bearing, journal and 23 more...
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yearofglad's words
bildungsroman, icosahedron, defenestration, fantod, sesquipedalian, philopena, sjambok, prandial, palimpsest, logorrhea, eschatology, jodhpur and 47 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for clinker.

knitandpurl "Then she opened the door of the cold and silent furnace and stuck her hand inside. 'Eureka!' she shouted, with a loud, metallic echo, for there at the bottom of the furnace, with a sparse scattering of ashes and one forgotten clinker, lay the clue!"
Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright, p 195 of the 2008 paperback Jul 14, 2011
john “The United States spends more energy to produce a ton of cement clinker than Canada, Mexico and even China.�?
The New York Times, Energy Inefficient , January 18, 2009 Jan 19, 2009
chained_bear Usage note on lapstrake. May 1, 2008