▪ I. † clunch, a. Obs. exc. dial.
[Clunch adj. and n. are immediately connected: earlier quotations have actually been found for the n., but its various senses appear to arise more naturally from that of the adj. The LG. klunt, Du. klont ‘lump, clod, heavy and awkward mass, clown’, etc., which is explained etymologically as a nasalized derivative of the root which gave cleat, clot, clout (OTeut. *klunt-, from klut-), must app. have formerly been used in the same sense in Eng. (where it still lingers dialectally in restricted use: see below), as is evidenced by numerous derivatives, clunter, etc. An adj. *cluntisc, cluntish ‘of the nature of a lump, lumpy, lumpish, loutish’ (cf. Cheshire Gloss. 1866, cluntish rough-spoken, uncivil), may possibly have been contracted to clunch (cf. Frencisc, French, Scottish, Scotch). The close phonetic relation of clunch and clumse, together with overlapping of meanings seems to have resulted in the frequent treatment of the two as synonymous.]
1. Lumpy, lumpish; heavy and stiff, or close, as clay or pudding; thickset, ‘chunky,’ in figure.
| 1776 Anstey Election Ball (1808) 210 In pudding there's something so clumsy and clunch. 1787 F. Burney Diary 13 July, I found him [Dr. Beattie] pleasant..with a round thick clunch figure, that promises nothing either of his works or his discourse. 1788 Ibid. 20 Oct., She is fat, and clunch, and heavy, and ugly. |
2. dial. (See quot.) Cf. clumse, clumsed 4.
| 1877 N.W. Lincolnsh. Gloss., Clunch: 1. Close, hot, cloudy (of the weather): 2. sullen, morose. 1889 Nottingham dial., Clunch, morose, sulky. |
▪ II. clunch, n.
(klʌnʃ)
Also 7 clunche, clounch.
[Probably n. use of the prec.; in several senses it corresponds to LG. klunt, and possibly to a lost Eng. n. of that form. But the analogy of bump, bunch, hump, hunch, suggests a similar relation of clump, clunch.]
1. A lump, a heavy and unshapely mass.
(Known only in mod. dialect, but prob. of considerable age.) [So EFris. klunt.]
| 1888 Sheffield Gloss., Clunch, a lump. ‘He's got a clunch of snow on his boot.’ |
2. A lumpish fellow, a clown, boor, lout. Cf. clod, clot. Obs. exc. dial. [So EFris. klunt.]
| 1602 Clapham Serm. St. Peter's in Manningham Diary (1868) 116 Howe like a clowne, a clunche, an asse, he annswers. 1653 Urquhart Rabelais i. xv, A very clounch, and bacon-slicer of Brene. 1658 Cleveland Rustic Rampant Wks. (1687) 414 These rascals, scorned and sleighted by every tatter'd Clunch. 1875 Lanc. Gloss., Clunch, a clod⁓hopper or boor. 1878 Cumbrld. Gloss., Clunch, a heavy stupid person or animal. |
† 3. A (clumsy) hand, ‘fist’. Obs. [? Influenced by clutch, or by clench (see clunch v.); but cf. EFris. klunt a clumsy, clodhopping foot.]
| 1709 W. King Art of Love v, Others try her greasy Clunches With stoning Currants in whole Bunches. |
4. A name given locally to various stiff clays; esp. an indurated clay of the coal-measures.
| 1679 Plot Staffordsh. (1686) 131 Upon the surface they meet first with earth and stone, 2. blew clunch. 1712 F. Bellers in Phil. Trans. XXVII. 541 A Blewish hard Clay; the Miners call it Clunch. This is one of the certain Signs of Coal. 1816 W. Smith Strata Ident. 21 Hard clay rising in lumps, called Clunch. |
5. A soft white limestone forming the lower and harder beds of the chalk, occasionally used for building purposes, esp. internal carved work.
| 1823 Nichols Progr. Q. Eliz. III. 76 note, Carved in clunch or soft stone. 1844 Ansted Geology II. 455 (L.) Like other kinds of clunch (as the lower chalk is sometimes called), this bed forms an easily cut and a very useful material for certain kinds of internal decorative work. 1879 Sir G. Scott Lect. Archit. I. 188 The western portal..owing to the friable clunch of which it is constructed, has lost the greater part of its decorations. |
6. Comb., as clunch-clay, = 4; also the Oxford clay; clunch-lime = 5.
| 1815 W. Smith Mem. to Map Strata Eng. & Wales 19 In the vale of Blackmore..the *clunch clay..from the base of the Chalk hills to the edge of the Cornbrash limestone. 1846 M{supc}Culloch Acc. Brit. Empire (1854) I. 79 A bed of clay, called clunch clay and Oxford clay, separates the lower oolites from the middle oolites. |
| 1793 Smeaton Edystone L. §210 What is called near Lewis in Sussex, the *Clunch Lime..a species of chalk. |
▪ III. † clunch, v. Obs. rare—1.
By-form of clench (or mixture of clench and clutch).
| 1628 Earle Microcosm. (Arb.) 41 His fist cluncht with the habite of disputing. |