Cly

noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person's pocket. obsolete, slang
Verb
  1. 1
    To seize; to steal. obsolete, slang, transitive

    "Wapping thou I know does love, / Else the ruffin cly the mort; / From thy stampers then remove, / Thy drawers, and let's prig in sport."

Example

More examples

"Wapping thou I know does love, / Else the ruffin cly the mort; / From thy stampers then remove, / Thy drawers, and let's prig in sport."

Etymology

Probably related to claw (compare Low German kleien, klaien (“to claw, scratch, grasp, seize”), dialectal German klauen, kläuen, kleuen (“to steal”), German klauen (“to steal, rip off”)). Alternatively referred by some to Dutch kleed (“a garment”); "to fake a cly" was to take a garment.

Related phrases

frisk someone's cly

More for "cly"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.