English
clog
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /klɒɡ/
  • (America) IPA: /klɑɡ/, /klɔɡ/
Noun

clog (plural clogs)

  1. A type of shoe with an inflexible, often wooden sole sometimes with an open heel.
    Dutch people rarely wear clogs these days.
    • 1849, Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (novel), Chapter 15,
      […] as to the poor—just look at them when they come crowding about the church doors on the occasion of a marriage or a funeral, clattering in clogs;
    • 2002, Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones, Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press, Chapter 5, p. 92,
      She stomped up the stairs. Her clogs slammed against the pine boards of the staircase and shook the house.
  2. A blockage.
    The plumber cleared the clog from the drain.
  3. (UK, colloquial) A shoe of any type.
    • 1987, Withnail and I:
      Withnail: I let him in this morning. He lost one of his clogs.
  4. A weight, such as a log or block of wood, attached to a person or animal to hinder motion.
    • 1684, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part 2, Canto 3, p. 329,
      Yet as a Dog committed close
      For some offence, by chance breaks loose,
      And quits his Clog; but all in vain,
      He still draws after him his Chain.
    • 1855, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Letters” in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, p. 115,
      A clog of lead was round my feet
      A band of pain across my brow;
  5. That which hinders or impedes motion; an encumbrance, restraint, or impediment of any kind.
    • circa 1595 William Shakespeare, Richard II (play), Act V, Scene 6,
      The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,
      With clog of conscience and sour melancholy
      Hath yielded up his body to the grave;
    • 1777, Edmund Burke, A Letter from Edmund Burke: Esq; one of the representatives in Parliament for the city of Bristol, to John Farr and John Harris, Esqrs. sheriffs of that city, on the Affairs of America, London: J. Dodsley, p. 8,
      All the ancient, honest, juridical principles and institutions of England, are so many clogs to check and retard the headlong course of violence and oppression.
    • 1865, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Chapter 56,
      If we were as rich as your uncle, I should feel it to be both a duty and a pleasure to keep an elegant table; but limited means are a sad clog to one’s wishes.
Translations Translations Translations
  • Russian: препя́тствие
Verb

clog (clogs, present participle clogging; past and past participle clogged)

  1. To block or slow passage through (often with 'up').
    Hair is clogging the drainpipe.
    The roads are clogged up with traffic.
  2. To encumber or load, especially with something that impedes motion; to hamper.
    • The wings of winds were clogged with ice and snow.
  3. To burden; to trammel; to embarrass; to perplex.
    • 1705 (revised 1718), Joseph Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy
      The commodities […] are clogged with impositions.
    • c. 1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act III, scene vi]:
      You'll rue the time / That clogs me with this answer.
  4. (legal) To enforce a mortgage lender right that prevents a borrower from exercising a right to redeem.
    • 1973, Humble Oil & Refining Co. v. Doerr, 123 N.J. Super. 530, 544, 303 A.2d 898.
      For centuries it has been the rule that a mortgagor’s equity of redemption cannot be clogged and that he cannot, as a part of the original mortgage transaction, cut off or surrender his right to redeem. Any agreement which does so is void and unenforceable [sic] as against public policy.
  5. (intransitive) To perform a clog dance.
Translations

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