Clem
name, noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A brick or stone. Geordie, Teesside, slang
- 2 One stone (unit of mass). slang
- 3 A testicle. Geordie, slang, vulgar
- 1 To be hungry; starve. UK, dialectal, intransitive, transitive
""[…] Here he's back home again, and without work, and without a penny, and thou knows t' little one and I were pretty well clemmed to death when thou got us a bit o' bread and meat last night. We were that!""
- 2 Alternative form of clam (“to adhere”). alt-of, alternative
- 1 A unisex given name.; A diminutive of the male given name Clement.
- 2 A unisex given name.; A diminutive of the female given name Clementine.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples""[…] Here he's back home again, and without work, and without a penny, and thou knows t' little one and I were pretty well clemmed to death when thou got us a bit o' bread and meat last night. We were that!""
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English *clemmen, *clammen, from Old English clemman, clæmman (“to press, surround”), from Proto-West Germanic *klammjan (“to squeeze”). Cognate with Dutch klemmen (“to jam, pinch, stick”), German klemmen (“to jam, clamp; to be stuck, stick [to a surface]”).
From Old English clām (“paste, mortar, mud, clay, poultice”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaim, equivalent to cloam. Similar linguistic development led to the Northumbrian pronunciation of hyem, equivalent to the RP home.
Shortening.
Related phrases
More for "clem"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.