English

clinker brick

Alternative forms

• (brick, vowel): klinker

Noun

clinker ‎(countable and uncountable, plural clinkers)

1. A very hard brick used for paving customarily made in the Netherlands. [from 17th c.]
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943, Chapter XXXII, p. 581,

     She left the road at the little shed where he whom she still regarded as her father used to keep his tricycle, and walked up the clinker path towards the house.

2. A mass of bricks fused together by intense heat. [from 17th c.]
3. Slag or ash produced by intense heat in a furnace, kiln or boiler that forms a hard residue upon cooling. [from 18th c.]
   • 1944, Emily Carr, The House of All Sorts, "Dew and Alarm Clocks,"

     Cold and grim sat that malevolent brute the furnace, greedy, bottomless—its grate bars clenched over clinkers which no shaker could dislodge.

4. An intermediate product in the manufacture of Portland cement, obtained by sintering limestone and alumino-silicate materials such as clay into nodules in a cement kiln.
5. Hardened volcanic lava. [from 19th c.]
   • 2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society 2011, p. 10:

     Nobody could pretend that a huge slope of clinker is aesthetically pleasing.

6. A scum of oxide of iron formed in forging. [from 19th c.]

Derived terms

• clinker block

Translations

Etymology 2

From clink +‎ -er.

Noun

clinker ‎(plural clinkers)

1. Someone or something that clinks.
2. (in the plural) Fetters.

Translations

Etymology 3

From clincher

Noun

clinker ‎(uncountable)

1. (nautical, chiefly attributive) A style of boatbuilding using overlapping planks.

   clinker planking; a clinker dinghy

Synonyms

• lapstrake

Derived terms

• clinker-built
• clinkerwise

Translations

Anagrams

• crinkle

French

Noun

clinker m ‎(plural clinkers)

1. clinker