Cluck
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks.
- 2 the sound made by a hen (as in calling her chicks) wordnet
- 3 Any sound similar to this.
- 4 A kind of tongue click used to urge on a horse.
- 5 A setting hen. Texas
- 1 To make low clicking sounds (refers to hens). intransitive
""I came across him once," he continued, "when he was playing down on the main road to Skaug; there he sat in the middle of the road with a lot of hens around him, I counted seven, and there were more round about in the wood, for I heard them clucking and calling behind every bush.""
- 2 make a clucking sounds, characteristic of hens wordnet
- 3 To cause (the tongue) to make a clicking sound. transitive
"My mother clucked her tongue in disapproval."
- 4 To call together, or call to follow, as a hen does her chickens.
"When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood, Has clucked thee to the wars and safely home."
- 5 To suffer withdrawal from heroin. British
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"It's now the season when cheetahs like to chase after herds of deer and when wild turkeys gather into rafters and go cluck together."
Etymology
From Middle English clokken, clocken, from Old English cloccian (“to cluck, make a noise”), from Proto-West Germanic *klukkwōn, from Proto-Germanic *klukkwōną (“to make a sound, cluck”), of imitative origin. Cognate with Scots clok, clock (“to cluck”), Dutch klokken (“to cluck”), Low German klucken (“to cluck”), German glucken (“to cluck”), Danish klukke (“to cluck”), Swedish klucka (“to cluck”), Icelandic klökkva (“to sob, whine, cluck”).
* As a German surname, Americanized from Kluck. * As a Polish and Czech surname, Americanized from Kluk.
Related phrases
More for "cluck"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.