Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The characteristic sound made by a hen when brooding or calling its chicks.
  • noun A sound similar to this.
  • noun Informal A stupid or foolish person.
  • intransitive verb To utter the characteristic sound of a hen.
  • intransitive verb To make a sound similar to that of a hen, as in coaxing a horse.
  • intransitive verb To call by making the characteristic sound of a hen or a similar sound.
  • intransitive verb To express by clucking.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To utter the call or cry of a brooding hen or a hen with young chicks.
  • To call or incite by clucking, as a hen her chicks.
  • noun A sound uttered by a hen when broody, or in calling her chicks.
  • noun Same as click, 2.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To call together, or call to follow, as a hen does her chickens.
  • noun The call of a hen to her chickens.
  • noun A click. See 3d Click, 2.
  • intransitive verb To make the noise, or utter the call, of a brooding hen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks.
  • noun Any sound similar to this.
  • noun A kind of tongue click used to urge on a horse.
  • verb To make such a sound.
  • verb UK, drug slang to suffer withdrawal from heroin.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make a clucking sounds, characteristic of hens
  • noun the sound made by a hen (as in calling her chicks)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English clokken, from Old English cloccian.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English clocken, clokken, from Old English cloccian ("to cluck, make a noise"), from Proto-Germanic *klukkwōnan (“to make a sound, cluck”), of imitative origin. Cognate with Scots clok, clock ("to cluck"), Dutch klokken ("to cluck"), Low German klukken ("to cluck"), German glucken ("to cluck"), Danish klukke ("to cluck"), Swedish klucka ("to cluck"), Icelandic klökkva ("to sob, whine, cluck").

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Examples

Comments

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  • Is cluck the best word for the sound made when you move your tongue suddenly from the roof of your mouth to the floor of your mouth? The sound kids use to imitate horses. Seems like there's another word for that but my brain is stuck on cluck!

    February 24, 2010

  • Try doing it faster.

    February 24, 2010

  • I would say it was more of a clock than a cluck.

    February 24, 2010