▪ I. cletch, n. dial.
Also clatch.
[f. cleck v.: cf. bake, batch, etc. Cf. clutch n.2]
A brood, a hatching (of chickens); contempt. a family.
| 1691 Ray N.C. Words, Cletch, a Brood: as, a Cletch of Chickens. 1802 Paley Nat. Theol. Wks. 1830 IV. 161 Ten, fifteen, or twenty young birds may be produced in one cletch or covey. 1855 Robinson Whitby Gloss., ‘A cletch of chickens’. 1858 Bailey Age 147 You and your tribe will form a numerous clatch Some day, I take it, about Colney Hatch. 1868 E. Waugh Sneck-bant i. 7 in Lanc. Gloss., A clatch of ducks. 1877 Holderness Gloss., ‘He cums of a bad cletch’. 1880 Lanc. Gloss., Clatch, clutch. |
▪ II. cletch, v.
var. cleach or clitch, to clutch, or snatch.
| 1612 Pasquil's Night-Cap (1877) 30 So long the flye doth at the candle cletch, That in conclusion she her wings doth burne. |