Dictionary

clamper en · NOUN · etymology 1

Etymology

From clamp + -er.

Meanings

1. One who, or that which, clamps.
   • If you park your car in a no-parking zone, watch out for clampers.
2. An attachment with sharp metal prongs, attached to a boot or shoe to enable the wearer to walk securely upon ice.
   • 1853-1855, Elisha Kane, Arctic Explorations: the Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin Both divisions are provided with clampers, to steady them and their sledges on the irregular ice-surfaces […]
3. A circuit that restricts the amplitude of a waveform.

Forms

Synonyms

creeper · crampon

clamper en · VERB · etymology 2

Meanings

1. To crimp.
   • The punch was then removed and the edge of the hole in the pad clampered. 1900, The Age of Steel - Volume 88, page 15:
   • An engineering unit faced with the problem of changing every time boring tool and clampering tool for reboring the cylinder and clampering the edges of bores of automobile cylinder blocks, which involved a huge waste of time. 1968, India. Office of the Development Commissioner, Small-Scale Industries, Small Scale Industries in India, page 276:
   • A person with epilepsy, employed as a "Burrer B" — an individual who removes burrs and rough edges from commercial and industrial machine parts — uses hand tools, files, burr knives, scrapers, and clampering tools. 2000, Daniel J. Ryan, Job Search Handbook for People with Disabilities, →ISBN:
   • Scratch-cutters are used on the tenons to give them a rough glue-holding surface, the ends of tenons are then clampered a little so they will readily enter the hub-mortise. 1883, Pamphlets on Forestry - Volume 11, page 20:
2. (obsolete) To join in an unsystematic or haphazard fashion.
   • The ship's masts were oak and clampered together, nothing worth. 1894, Publications of the Navy Records Society, volume 2, page 298:
   • But this Netherlands is the main bar; I have no pluck in me for such things at present — yet it must be clampered together in some shape, and shall if I keep wagging. 1886, Thomas Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, volume 1, page 359:
   • Unlike Foxe, who avoided extensive discussion of the Book of Common Prayer (already a source of contention among the Marian exiles) and devoted long, debunking discussions to the Roman service ( "declaring . . . how and by whom this popish or rather apish mass became so clampered and patched together with so many divers and sundry additions"— 6.368 ), Hooker takes the very form of the English prayerbook as the structural matrix for his argument and welcomes the papal origin of many of its elements. 1994, Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, →ISBN, page 275:
3. To move in a noisy and clumsy manner.
   • Eh! is nae that Ecclesfield's foot clampering wi' his spurs at the door? 1823, John Galt, Ringan Gilhaize; Or, The Times of the Convenanters, page 197:
   • But who is this, clampering in his hobnailed boots, in a state of mingled perplexity, perspiration, loquacity, hoarseness, velveteen, clasp-knife and bread and cheese ? 1861, W. S. Woodin's Cabinet of Curiosities:
   • A troop of Zurich yeomanry, having been reviewed, were "clampering," it could not be called prancing, on their great heavy steeds, through the town, to the great wonder and admiration of the idlers and their assistants, who were lounging about in considerable numbers. 1838, John Roby, Seven weeks in Belgium, Switzerland, Lombardy, Piedmont, Savoy:
4. To complain in an irritating manner.
   • Delivered from the clampering clutch of self, we are built up into a re-collected consciousness of God. 1933, International Journal of Religious Education, volume 10, page 5:
   • Sir James Areskine also perceaving he prevailed nothing by clampering with the Bishop of Clogher, he desired to be reconciled to the Bishop, and soon after died at Dublin, where the Bishop of Clogher was requested by his sone and other friends to make his funeral sermon, and did (so) accordingly. 1844, The Spottiswoode Miscellany, page 149:
   • But well he found that who is too busy in the foundation of a house may pull the building about his ears ; for the people, already tired with their own divisions (of which his clampering had been a principal nurse), and beginning now to espy a haven of rest, hated anything that should hinder them from it. 1999, Philip Sidney, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The Old Arcadia), →ISBN, page 308:

Forms