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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
cluck
I.verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Jessica clucked her tongue in sympathy when she saw his bruised arm.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Generally silent, but drakes cluck and squeak during courtship.
▪ He clucks his tongue to make the noise.
▪ Loopy Lil clucked anxiously around like a pigeon.
▪ Once could not genetically engineer a duck to make it cluck.
▪ The young man clucked, poured himself more champagne, and drank it.
II.noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Mrs. Newman shook her head with a disapproving cluck.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Loretta pushed her hair back from her face with a cluck of impatience.
▪ Now Artemis heard something, something feathery shaking itself, and then clucking, in a low, solemn cluck.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cluck

Cluck \Cluck\, n.

  1. The call of a hen to her chickens.

  2. A click. See 3d Click, 2.

Cluck

Cluck \Cluck\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Clucked; p pr. & vb. n. Clucking.] [AS. cloccian; cf. D. klokken, G. glucken, glucksen, LG. klukken, Dan. klukke; all prob. of imitative origin.] To make the noise, or utter the call, of a brooding hen.
--Ray.

Cluck

Cluck \Cluck\, v. t. To call together, or call to follow, as a hen does her chickens.

She, poor hen, fond of no second brood, Has clucked three to the wars.
--Shak.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
cluck

Old English cloccian originally echoic. Compare Turkish culuk, one of the words for "turkey;" Greek klozein, Latin glocire, German glucken. Related: Clucked; clucking.

cluck

1703, "sound made by a hen," from cluck (v.). Slang meaning "stupid person" (turkeys are famously foolish) is from 1927.

Wiktionary
cluck

n. 1 The sound made by a hen, especially when brooding, or calling her chicks. 2 Any sound similar to this. 3 A kind of tongue click used to urge on a horse. vb. 1 To make such a sound. 2 To call together, or call to follow, as a hen does her chickens. 3 (context British drug slang English) to suffer withdrawal from heroin.

WordNet
cluck
  1. n. the sound made by a hen (as in calling her chicks)

  2. v. make a clucking sounds, characteristic of hens [syn: click, clack]

Wikipedia
Cluck

Cluck may refer to:

  • Clucking, reproduction-related vocal behavior of female chicken
  • Cluck, domestic hen perceived as unproductive of eggs due to brooding phase of avian incubation behavior

Usage examples of "cluck".

Giles clucked his tongue as though admonishing a child caught stealing tarts.

Clucking and grunting all the while, they repeated the performance over and over while Alec and Beka watched in silent delight.

Revenge for the girl-child who had been no more than a shield, revenge for all the cluck heads and the junkies who had found willing and cooperative allies in their attempt at anesthetic self-destruction, revenge for all the non-white peoples of the world who had stumbled into the snares set by their own kind in the holy name of profit.

Jenna wondered at that, but then Mac Ard clucked once at Conhal, and the horse started walking, startling Jenna.

Quebec, and chance hunters brought word that what with sleep, and the measured tramp, tramp of the pig, and the baying of the dogs, and the clucking of the chickens inside the fort, the escape of the whites had not been discovered for a week.

I crawled under the seat with the blanket wrapped around me, Mary clucked her tongue and gave the reins a shake, and the buckboard was on the move again.

Her lips part when she speaks, but sometimes only these clucks or cloks emerge.

An ancient nun came from the convent to spread a soothing ointment over his skin, all the while clucking her tongue.

There were letters from Cicero, squawking and clucking about the welfare of his younger brother, Quintus.

He watched the goddess move from horse to horse, clucking and murmuring and whispering strange endearments to each of them.

Several years ago he had gone on a tour of Ethiopia with a clucking band of international future-seers and watched their calculus collide with life.

Perched up on the boards she held the reins loosely between her fingers, clucking for the horses to move on, then flicked a whip across their backs.

Miss Holly was hovering in the background supervising the departure, clucking with admiration at the spotless kitchen, thanking them for the gifts of food covered with cling film and neatly stacked in the hotel refrigerator.

The girls led them up four steep, very long flights of creaking wooden stairs and guided them through a doorway into their own wonderful and resplendent tenement apartment, which burgeoned miraculously with an infinite and proliferating flow of supple young naked girls and contained the evil and debauched ugly old man who irritated Nately constantly with his caustic laughter and the clucking, proper old woman in the ash-gray woolen sweater who disapproved of everything immoral that occurred there and tried her best to tidy up.

Ptarmigan and dotterel clucked contentedly in the heath and silver-studded blue butterflies fed upon its honey-scented nectar.