Clabber
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Sour or curdled milk. uncountable
"Even butter had proved beyond her means, for the milk she had tried to churn had never firmed up beyond the consistency of runny clabber."
- 2 raw milk that has soured and thickened wordnet
- 3 Wet clay or mud. uncountable
- 1 To sour or curdle.
"They always had more milk than they needed and often entire buckets would clabber and one of her brothers would carry it out to the bunkhouse for the vaqueros."
- 2 turn into curds wordnet
Example
More examples"Even butter had proved beyond her means, for the milk she had tried to churn had never firmed up beyond the consistency of runny clabber."
Etymology
Shortening of bonny clabber, from Irish bainne clábar (“mud, thick milk for churning”) or a Scots Gaelic cognate thereof; the latter is probably related to láib (“dirt, mud, filth”).
Related phrases
More for "clabber"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.