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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

clem.

To be hungry; starve.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/klɛm/
  1. To be hungry; starve.

    UK · dialectal · intransitive · transitive
Where this word comes from

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]”).

noun/klɛm/
  1. A brick or stone.

    Geordie · Teesside · slang
  2. One stone (unit of mass).

    slang
  3. A testicle.

    Geordie · slang · vulgar
Where this word comes from

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.

verb/klɛm/
  1. Alternative form of clam (“to adhere”).

    alt-of · alternative
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.