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Clapper   /klˈæpər/   Listen
Clapper

noun
1.
Someone who applauds.  Synonym: applauder.
2.
A mobile mass of muscular tissue covered with mucous membrane and located in the oral cavity.  Synonyms: glossa, lingua, tongue.
3.
Metal striker that hangs inside a bell and makes a sound by hitting the side.  Synonym: tongue.



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"Clapper" Quotes from Famous Books



... him well. "A palsy on her leg, and a palsy strike thee," he thundered, "if with thy old women's tales we miss the path! Go drive the goats in, thick-chops, and stay that clapper of thine till they ask for a crow-keeper. Move now, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... noise and confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... as they sallied out, and that the gold-laced hat of the Captain was seen rising like Hesper above the dewy verge of the rising ground, the clash (for it was rather a clash than a clang) of the bell was heard from the old moss-grown tower, and the clapper continued to thump its cracked sides all the while they advanced towards the kirk, Duncan exhorting them to take their own time, "for teil ony sport ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... lot of Greek words myself," said Drysdale; "but old Murdock was too pleased at hearing his own clapper going, and too full of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... Philip Sidney as saying that the "chief life of modern versifying consists in rhyme." Swift agrees with him. "Verse without rhyme," he says, "is a body without a soul, or a bell without a clapper." He thinks Milton's "Paradise Lost" would be greatly improved if it had rhyme. This, he says, would make it "more heroic and ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... imminence of the danger; but we may charitably suppose, that he held such language for the purpose of preventing alarm which might be fatal. The alarm bell was now rung with so much violence that the clapper broke, and some of the passengers continued to strike it for some time with a stone. The bell was heard, it is said, at Beaumaris, but, as there was no light hoisted on the mast of the steamer, (a fatal ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... across the heath rang the great bell, Colmoor being famous for its bell, its tone and great size, larger than even the eight-ton "Mighty Tom" of Christ Church, for though its thickness was only six inches, it weighed, bell and clapper, ten tons, and was seven feet ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... "'Keep your clapper shut, Hornblower,' returned the Squire, telling Hornblower, how, if he doubted his capacity for the law business, he would read him Haliburton's opinions, and convince him that they precisely conformed with his. 'Remember you're in the presence of a Justice of the Peace!' he added, as ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... unsatisfactory stare which was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow, incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers. These were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose custom it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their acid wine and smoking their cheap ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... waves, and he listened, listened for years, to the awful, brazen hum from which there could be no escape; at the same time it seemed to him that he was only a Freshman on the slippery roof of the tower, trying to steal the clapper of the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not whine—it creates. No one cares to know what a man thinks of his own actions. No one is interested to learn that Bulwer meant 'Paul ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk. Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who can deliver ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... struck, that body, or some part of it, is made to vibrate. This is evident to sense in the string of a violin or harpsichord, for we may perceive by the eye, or feel by the hand, the trembling of the strings, when by striking they are made to sound. If a bell be struck by a clapper on the inside, the bell is made to vibrate. The base, of the bell, is a circle, but it has been found that by striking any part of this circle on the inside, that part flies out, so that the diameter which passes through this part of the base will be longer than the other diameter. The ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... nae doubt at ye lauoh at havers, an' there's mony 'at lauchs 'at your clipper-clapper, but they're no Thrums fowk, and they canna' lauch richt. But we maun juist settle this matter. When we're ta'en up wi' the makkin' o' humour, we're a' dependent on other fowk to tak' note o' the humour. There's no nane o' us 'at's lauched at anything you've telt us. But they'll lauch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... Kitson, though I have long known that hot water is yours. I never suffer a woman to touch my ropes, and Mrs. Lyndsay borrowed those ropes this morning of me. Don't interrupt me, Mrs. K.; attend to your business, and leave me to mine. Put a stopper upon that clapper of yours; which goes at the rate of ten knots an ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... of going into the jungle on the back of an elephant, we generally took Kari with us. During such trips we did not put a cloth of gold on his back or silver bells on his sides. These bells are made in certain parts of India where silversmiths know how to melt and mix silver so that when the clapper strikes the sides of the bell there will be a sound like rushing water. The two bells are tied by a silver chain and slung over the elephant's back, one dangling on each side of him. We never put a howdah on the back of Kari. Very few Hindus ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... produced two copper coins, and laid them in his palm. As the exchange was made he backed upon Mrs Pengelly's shop door, and the impact set a bell clanging. The sense of it shot up his spine of a sudden, and at each stroke of the clapper he felt he had sold his soul to the devil. But Miss Oliver stood in front of him, with a smile on her face that seemed to waver the more she fixed it: and at this moment the voice ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... borders of the island was alive with clapper rails. Before I rose in the morning I heard them crying in full chorus; and now and then during the day something would happen, and all at once they would break out with one sharp volley, and then ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... your folded wrapper, Where two twin turtledoves dwell! O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Columbine! open your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell; O Cuckoo-pint! toll me the purple clapper, That hangs ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... 's so dangerous as speakin' before the time, whomsoever and wheresoever. Folks talk o' bridlin' the tongue; let 'em git a blind halter, say I, and a curb-bit, and a martingale! Not that I set an example, Goodness knows, for mine runs like a mill-clapper, rickety-rick, rickety-rick; but never mind, it may be fast, but it ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... partially discharged in the unopened bud, is prevented from falling out by a coat of hairs on the upper part of the style. By the time all the pollen has been removed by visitors, however, and the stamens which matured early have withered, the pistil has grown longer, until it looks like the clapper in a bell; the stigma at its top has separated into three horizontal lobes which, being sticky on the under side, a pollen-laden insect on entering the bell must certainly brush against them and render them fertile. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... student remained out a term in order to attend a session of the Legislature to which he had been elected. The college students of the late seventies and early eighties were serious minded and thought of questions as men and not as boys. Though the clapper of the college bell was sometimes thrown into the well or the president's wagon was transferred to the chapel roof, these things were often done from a sort of sense of duty: college students were expected to be mischievous. ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... a separate sheet written by his younger sisters, with scrawly postscripts from the little boys to tell Jack how the workmen had dug down and found the old church bell, and that there was a crack in it, and the clapper ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard

... that above the gentle clapper of the waters she could hear a rustle and the scrunching of the fine gravel under carefully measured footsteps. She waited a while. The footsteps seemed to draw nearer, and soon, although the starlit night was very dark, she perceived a cloaked and hooded ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... and Sancho Panza in the one same man! you will readily comprehend what a cat-and-dog couple they made! what strife! what clapper-clawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for Lucian or Saint-Evremond to write, between the two Tartarins—Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin! Quixote-Tartarin firing up on the stories of Gustave Aimard, and shouting: ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... the rear of the silent house and through the servants' hall, then around by the kitchen garden, then felt his way along a hedge to a hutchlike lodge where a fixed iron bell hung quivering under the slow blows of the clapper. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... has been touched and you forget everything; then she sobs while she speaks, and speaks while she sobs. This is a sort of machine eloquence; she deafens you with her tears, with her words which come jerked out in confusion; it is the clapper and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my venerable old ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... their native haunts, and prized for the aquarium. But they are very delicate. How beautiful and remarkable are these headless Discophori, as they float, and propel themselves with involutions of their disks and gently trailing tentacles, and the central peduncle hanging far below, like the clapper of a transparent bell! And yet these wonders are but so much sea-water, inclosed in so slight a tissue that it withers in the sun, and leaves only a minute spot of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... "Stop your clapper, Jack!" vociferated a third. "Give the boy a junk o' meat. Don't you see he's a'most ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... iron strip or armature S; and from S the current flows back to the battery. As soon as the current flows, the coils become magnetic and attract the soft iron armature, drawing it forward and causing the clapper to strike the bell. In this position, S no longer touches the screw P, and hence there is no complete path for the electricity, and the current ceases. But the attractive, magnetic power of the coils stops as soon as the current ceases; hence there is nothing ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... ago the whole plain was covered with the flying French cavalry—Burgundy, and Bern, and the Chevalier of St. George flying like the rest. "What is your clamor about Oudenarde?" says another bell (Bob Major THIS one must be). "Be still, thou querulous old clapper! I can see over to Hougoumont and St. John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one Sunday in June, when there was such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you others ever ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Alec Johnstone to him, "wait till auld Clapper gie's ye a biff or twa wi' his muckle tawse. Do ye ken what he does to mak' them nippy? He burns them a wee bit in the fire, an' then st'eeps them in ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... glibly a translation without one particle of literary merit, and was then plied with the usual grammatical questions. Being asked to "synopsize'' the Greek verb, he went through the various moods and tenses, in all sorts of ways and in all possible combinations, his tongue rattling like the clapper of a mill. When he sat down my next neighbor said to me, "that man will be our valedictorian.'' This disgusted me. If that was the style of classical scholarship at Yale, I knew that there was nothing in it for me. It turned out as my friend said. That glib reciter did become ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... France and in England, was critical and contemptuous; but by this time Oscar had so captured the public that he could afford to disdain critics and calumny. The play was praised by his admirers as if it had been a masterpiece, and London discussed it the more because it was in French and not clapper-clawed ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... clapper! clapper! like my mill in a high wind, landlord. Clapper! clapper! clapper!—enough ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... the Leather-bell rattle on, perhaps he did not even listen to him. He paid as little attention to the tongue of the Leather-bell as he did to the clapper of the bell that hung in the church tower, perhaps less. For, indeed, in the solemn sonorous ding-dong, ding-dong of the church bell, those who have ears to hear, and still preserve memories of the past, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... he? Along that line of talk! The clapper-jaw! He's altogether too free." She surveyed me keenly. "And naturally you couldn't understand ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... bed and cover coal; Let the mouse out of her hole; Crickets in the chimney sing Whilst the little bell doth ring; If fast asleep, who can tell When the clapper ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... dear man, sit ye down! Shut yer clapper, Nora! Sure it's mesilf that knows a paythriot whin I sees 'im. Tear-an-ages! Give me yer hand, me boy. Sit ye down an' tell us about it. We're all the same kind here. Niver fear for the woman, she's the worst o' the lot. Tell us, dear man. Be the light that shines! it's mesilf ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... body is not under his control. Lips grow cold and dry; perspiration gushes from every pore of the brow and runs down the face; legs grow weak; eyes see nothing; hands swell to enormous proportions; violent pains shoot across the chest; the breath is confined within the lungs; from the clapper-like tongue comes only a faint click. Is it any wonder that under such physical agonies the mind refuses to respond—rather, is incapable ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... village were young fellows chosen in turn by the constable from the fire-prevention parties, made up by the youths of the village. There stood up in every village a high perpendicular ladder with a bell or wooden clapper at the top to give the alarm. The emblem of the fire brigade, a pole with white paper streamers attached, was sometimes distinguished by a yellow paper streamer awarded by ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... bell shown by our illustrations has been adopted for this purpose on the Austrian lines, and is a simple contrivance. It consists of a cylindrical chamber, a, ending in a narrower tube, c, which forms the seating for a flap valve, d, to which the hammer or clapper, e, is fixed. Steam is admitted through a small pipe, b, at the bottom, and after a certain interval attains sufficient pressure to lift the valve. The opening being large compared with the pipe, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... the big bell was going as he had never heard it before—not being rung, but as if someone had hold of the clapper and were beating it against the side—Dang, dang, dang, dang—stroke following stroke rapidly; and, half-confused by the sleep from which he had been awakened, Vane was trying to make out what it meant, when faintly, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... a long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... DeMille won reputation by collaborating in "The Wife," "Lord Chumley," "The Charity Ball," and "Men and Women," he was probably first individualized in the minds of present-day theatregoers when Mrs. Leslie Carter made a sensational swing across stage, holding on to the clapper of a bell in "The Heart of Maryland." Even thus early, he was displaying characteristics for which, in later days, he remained unexcelled. He was helping Bronson Howard to touch up "Baron Rudolph," "The Banker's Daughter" ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... tongue is like the clapper of a bell with the devil swinging from the rope. What else ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... seem to belong to the Orient, but rather to have drifted hither out of some quaint, familiar fairy tale of the North; and indeed they are only transient visitors here, and will soon be on their way to build their nests on the roofs of German villages and clapper their long, yellow bills over the joy of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... January, '39, Jake Hinkle came down to the "Court House," hitched his horse to the Court Square fence, and made a straight bend for Sanders' "Grocery," and began to "wood up." Old Jake's tongue was a perfect bell-clapper, and when well oiled with corn juice, could rip into the high and low Dutch like a nor'easter into a field of broom corn. Jake talked and talked, and drank and talked, and about midnight, the cocks crowing, the stars winking and blinking, and the wind nipping and whistling ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... of the in pace, for example, in spite of its strength, verges dangerously on the province of the penny novelist. I do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the bell; I should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper. And again, the following two sentences, out of an otherwise admirable chapter, surely surpass what it had ever entered into the heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180): "Il souffrait tant que par instants il s'arrachait des poignees de cheveux, pour voir s'ils ne blanchissaient ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... enough left for them and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... air as part of the city's life—the most spiritual, poetical, and recreative part of it. Nothing of the kind has ever been tried in London. The crashing peals of a dozen large bells banged violently with clapper instead of softly struck with hammer, the exasperating dong, or ding, dong, of the Ritualist temple over the way, or the hoarse, gong-like roar of Big Ben—that is all we know about bells in London, and no form of church ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... I know, but the only one I can think of just now is that it takes a priest to get round a woman; and I always feel inclined to jump on to the table myself when I think of those poor dear creatures sitting on the floor and feeling that awful thing clapper-clawing its way up ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... with its glancing lights, and tiny ferns and polypodys peer out from the crannies and hollows of big grey boulders. Here and there bushy willows grow along the edge, or a mountain-ash shows its feathery, deep green foliage and clusters of scarlet berries. A clapper bridge—that is, a bridge formed out of a single slab of granite—over twelve feet long lies across the Wallabrook near the meeting of the streams. Beside it grows a mountain-ash, and the quivering and wavering leaves, and their shadows that quiver and waver in the ripples beneath, make a profound ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... will, I know by experience, be as careful and as kind as ever. Were another to use harsh language to me, she would rise in wrath to defend me. And she does not, in truth, mean a tenth of what she says. But I am for the time as though I were within the clapper of a mill; and her passion goes on increasing because she can never get a word from me. "Mr Neverbend, I tell you this,—you are going to make a fool of yourself. I think it my duty to tell you so, as your wife. Everybody else ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... far from the truth. The matter really was a new line, invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper. The fish rang their own knell ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... saw a negro boy climb a ladder leaning against the side of the church and creep along the edge of the roof to the open cupola and grasp the clapper of the cast-iron bell. Then it began to toll. The boy was an unpractised hand, and the strokes were irregular, sometimes too ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... he grew, the downy, the dapper; He flew in and perched on the knob of the clapper, And shouted Too-whoo! An echo awoke Like a far-off ghostly Bing-Bang stroke: "Just so!" he cried; "I am quite at home! I will take his place with my Bing, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... then through the closes of the lower town, followed by the bellman who had been appointed crier upon his disappearance. At the proper stations, Duncan blew a rousing pibroch, after which the bellman, who, for the dignity of his calling, insisted on a prelude of three strokes of his clapper, proclaimed aloud that Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, desired the presence of each and every of his tenants in the royal burgh of Portlossie, Newton and Seaton, in the town hall of the same, at seven of the clock ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... rival heroes came face to face each made a prodigious start in the style of a veteran stage champion. Then did they regard each other for a moment with the bitter aspect of two furious tom-cats on the point of a clapper-clawing. Then did they throw themselves into one attitude, then into another striking their swords on the ground first on the right side, then on the left; at last at it they went with incredible ferocity. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... hyr nest and byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say They can nat speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... sat down, and looked up at the long branches, and fancied they were now in the depth of the green wood. The confectioner of the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons who ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... What is it now? Let me help I can talk faster when I'm doing something," which seemed hardly possible, for Kitty's tongue went like a mill clapper ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... anything but Blowes, Coles,[143] my Drink, and that clapper of the Divell, the tongue of a ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... him, familiar as he was with clergymen who gave out hymns and notices, and with his own solicitude at home that the singing should go well or that the choirboys should not fidget. But there was a terrible confusion with chairs, and a hideous kind of clapper that was used, apparently, to warn the boys to sit and rise. The service, moreover, as a reverential congregational act of worship such as he was used to hope for, was marred by innumerable collections, and especially by the old woman who ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... distinctly to the school. In the drawing it is represented in an inclined position, being not quite drawn up, that the parts might more easily be seen. At d, there is a small projection of the tin upwards, which touches the clapper of the bell suspended above, every time the plate passes up or down, and thus give notice ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... e'e, she has but ane, [eye] The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, [besides] A clapper tongue wad deave a miller; [deafen] A whiskin beard about her mou, [mouth] Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... lazily over the street wall watching them. These rafts, which with the figures upon them produced a most picturesque effect, were called "clappers," and were used, especially by strangers and summer guests, for orientation and description of location. E.g. "He lives down by Klempin's clapper," or "opposite Jahnke's clapper." Between the rafts or wash benches were regular spaces devoted to piers, and here the majority of the ships were moored, in the winter often three or four rows. The crews were on shore at this ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... six months at Nismes, the church, by the protestants called the Temple, was re-opened, and public worship performed on the morning of the 24th of December. On examining the belfry, it was discovered that some persons had carried off the clapper of the bell. As the hour of service approached, a number of men, women, and children, collected at the house of M. Ribot, the pastor, and threatened to prevent the worship. At the appointed time, when he proceeded towards the church, he was surrounded; the most savage shouts were raised against ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... The Clapper Rail, or Mud Hen, is one of the most remarkable, and like its relative, the Corncrake of England, makes its note heard all the night long. It is fourteen inches in length and eighteen in the stretch ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... any one thinks to applaud. He makes three stiff bows. At the second the applause begins, swelling at once to a roar. He steps up to the piano, bows three times more, and then sits down. He hunches his shoulders, reaches for the pedals with his feet, spreads out his hands and waits for the clapper-clawing to cease. He is an undersized, paunchy East German, with hair the color of wet hay, and an extremely pallid complexion. Talcum powder hides the fact that his nose is shiny and somewhat pink. His eyebrows are carefully ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... besides who had the chance of gaining a penny, except little Ben, and as he was a sharp chap, he used to be set to scare away the birds, with a clapper in his hands, and such-like work; but to be sure he did not ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... the only means we had of taking the ship. We had only one small cannon, which we could not mount, and were therefore obliged to fire it as it lay along the deck; and we had only two round shot, a few chain-bolts, the clapper of the Speedwell's bell, and some bags of stones. We came up with her in four hours; but I now saw that she had guns and pattereroes, with a considerable number of men, whose arms glittered in the sun. The enemy defied ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... bell at once by thrusting his left hand in its mouth and holding the clapper; but the little peal he had rung had done its work of setting all the mules in motion, bringing them all up close to the ringer, who found himself in the midst of a knot of squealing and kicking brutes, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... warned not to approach the dwellings of men, or to wash in running streams, or to handle the ropes of draw-wells, or to drink from the cups of wayside springs. He was forbidden the highways, and when he went abroad a clapper must give token of his coming and going. Nothing that might be used by others should he touch ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... is collateral evidence that some similar system of marking time had been resorted to from early eras. But the whole story is vague. It seems, however, that the method of counting the hours was influenced by the manner of striking them. Whether bronze bell or wooden clapper was used, three preliminary strokes were given by way of warning, and it therefore became inexpedient to designate any of the hours "one," "two," or "three." Accordingly the initial number was four, and the day being divided into six hours, instead of twelve, the highest number became nine, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... and, glancing upward, I saw that the figure which I had already observed lolling in so odd an attitude over the poop rail was that of a dead man, grasping in his right hand the short length of rope attached to the clapper of the bell. His attitude was such that, as the ship swung upon the swell, his body moved just sufficiently to cause the clapper ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... often did the wrong thing. And I have no doubt that wherever he went he helped hold good the precedent that preachers' boys are not especially angelic. For instance, we have it on good authority that Bob, aged fourteen, once climbed into the belfry of a church and removed the clapper, so that the sexton thought the bell was bewitched. At another time he placed a washtub over the top of a chimney where a prayer-meeting was in progress, and the smoke broke up the meeting and gave ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... 8 inches long, and weigh 75 pounds each. The pendulum is 16 feet long, and the bob weighs 180 pounds, and yet is suspended by a spring no thicker than a shilling. The clock goes eight days, and strikes the hours on the great bell, the clapper of which weighs 180 pounds. Below the great bell are two smaller bells, on which the clock strikes the quarters. In the northern tower is the bell that tolls for prayers. Mr. E.B. Denison pronounced ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... enlargement and deformity of the hands and feet; the shafts of the bones are thickened, and the soft tissues of the terminal segments of the digits hypertrophied. The fingers come to resemble drum-sticks, and the thumb the clapper of a bell. The nails are convex, and incurved at their free ends, suggesting a resemblance to the beak of a parrot. There is also enlargement of the lower ends of the bones of the forearm and leg, and effusion into the wrist and ankle-joints. Skiagrams of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... made their appearance, and there were plums in the orchard. Then they made use of all the devices which had been recommended to them against the birds. But the bits of glass made dazzling reflections, the clapper of the wind-mill woke them during the night, and the sparrows perched on the lay figure. They made a second, and even a third, varying the dress, but without any ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... that she was comelier than the other, which that other very stoutly denied, and from the bandying of words they came to the bandying of blows, and because it is never a pretty sight to see two women at clapper-claws together, those about bestirred themselves to sunder the sweet amazons, and in the process of pulling them apart more blows were given and exchanged between those that sought at first to be peacemakers, and there were many hot words and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... assembled multitude, and deposited himself in the seat of honour. As there was no hammer in the room, the inventive genius of the learned chairman, suggested the substitution of his bell, and having agitated its clapper three times, and shouted "Orger" with stentorian emphasis, he proceeded to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... stood on a chair and twisted away the bell's wiring. Using his pocket knife as a screwdriver, he released the bell from the door lintel. Then he cleaned and polished it. This done, he removed the clapper, wrapped the bell up in a piece of newspaper, and made his unhesitating way back to the cellar beneath the Chinese laundry. He was very much awake as he went slowly down the narrow steps. He wanted nothing to ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... silv'ry and strong, The bells from the sound-shaken belfry are singing their first maiden song; Not now for the dead or the living, or the triumphs of peace or of strife, But a quick joyous outburst of jubilee full of their newly-felt life; Rapid, more rapid, the clapper rebounds from the round of the bells— Far and more far through the valley the intertwined melody swells— Quivering and broken the atmosphere trembles and twinkles around, Like the eyes and the hearts of the hearers that glisten and beat to ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... plunder; Call'd them her darlings, and her white boys, Her ducks, her dildings—all was right boys— "Only," she said, "my lads, have care Ye fall not into BLACK BACK'S snare; For, if he catch, he'll maul your corpus, And clapper-claw you to some purpose." She was in truth a kind of witch, Had grown by fortune-telling rich; To spells and conjurings did tackle her, And read folks' dooms by light oracular; In which she saw, as clear as daylight, What mischief on her bairns would a-light; Therefore ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... enough for a good rider to leap, but it is deep, and it does its wark weel summer and winter. They can break down the banks, woman, and let it spread all over the meadow; bonnie enough it will look, but the mill-clapper would soon stop. Now there's just sae much power, spiritual or temporal, in any man; spread it out, and it is shallow and no to be depended on for any purpose whatever. But narrow the channel, Jenny, narrow the channel, and it is a ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... clapper, you spooney, and be damned to you!" exclaimed the angry veteran.—"Had the Ingian fastened his paw upon your ugly neck as he did upon mine, all the pitiful life your mother ever put into you would have been spirited away from very fear; so you ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... taken off the leather so far that Nathan could see into the bellows. He saw that there was a little clapper over the hole, in one of the ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... know why she was saying it. The clock said that it was half-past eight, so she leaped out of bed into the vibrant cold, and bathed and dressed. Her sense of ruin was like lead, but was somehow the cause of exultation in her heart as the clapper is the cause of the peal of a bell. She went and knocked on Ellen's door. There was no answer, so she stole in and stood at the end of the bed, and looked with laughter on the heap of bedclothes, the pair of unravelling plaits that were ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... feeling. Men cover themselves all over with marks of that sort, which are not sensitive even to the prick of a divine remonstrance, rebuke, or retribution. They 'wipe their mouths and say I have done no harm.' You can tie up the clapper of the bell that swings on the black rock, on which, if you drift, you go to pieces. You can silence the Voice by the simple process of neglecting it. Judas set his teeth against two things, the solemn conviction that Jesus ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... begun, there is also a special behaviour to observe: "It shall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd in the middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest tragedy; and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high that all the house may ring of it: your lords use it; your knights are apes to the lords, and do so too ... be thou a beagle to them all.... [At] first, all the eyes in the galleries will leave walking ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... carried by them, he went slowly up the narrow spiral staircase. Arrived at the top, the soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of the bells. From the centre of the vault hung the famous "Gorda," an immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large crack; the clapper, which was the author of the mischief, lay below it, engraved and as thick as a column, and a smaller one now occupied the cavity. The roofs of the Cathedral, dark and ugly, lay at their feet, and in front on a hill rose the Alcazar, higher and larger than ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... suspension of his mental efforts, and the word was like the clapper of a disorderly bell, striking through him, with reverberations, in the form of interrogations, as to how he, of all men living, could by any chance have got into a wrangle, in a thoroughfare, on London Bridge, of all places in the world!—he, so popular, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... women much pursue me; None, however,—e'en the stately, Richly vine-clad, blue-eyed Mosel— Ever from my heart can banish Thee, the Feldberg's lovely daughter. When I through the sands of Holland Weary drag my sluggish waters, And I hear the wind-mills clapper, Tender longings oft steal o'er me For my early lovely sweetheart. Then with deep dull sound my waves roll Onward through the tedious meadows, Roll out far into the North Sea, But ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... of our light, And thus 'tis: Whether 't be a sin To claw and curry your own skin, Greater or less, than to forbear, 75 And that you are forsworn, forswear. But first, o' th' first: The inward man, And outward, like a clan and clan, Have always been at daggers-drawing, And one another clapper-clawing. 80 Not that they really cuff, or fence, But in a Spiritual Mystick sense; Which to mistake, and make 'em squabble In literal fray's abominable. 'Tis heathenish, in frequent use 85 With Pagans and apostate Jews, To offer sacrifice of bridewells, Like modern Indians ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... not hasty. As I said before, the doors rattled till you would have thought the knocking was reiterated in every room of the Palace. The bell rung out for company, though we could not find that any one tolled the clapper, and the guards let off their firelocks, merely because they knew not what better to do. So, Master Bibbet being, as I said, unsusceptible of his duty, I went down with my poor rapier to the door, and demanded ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... Walk' there is yet one more illustration. "Walk in the middle Ile in Paul's, and gentlemen's teeth walk not faster at ordinaries than there a whole day togeather about inquirie after newes."—Theeves falling out true men come by their good, or the Belman wanted a clapper, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... instrument, but it is everywhere recognized by the African who knows Europeans as "marimba." Thus Owen tells us (p. 308) "that at the mouth of the Zambesi it is called 'Tabbelah,'" evidently the Arabic "Tablah" Another favourite instrument is a clapper, made of two bamboos some five feet long, and thick as capstan bars,—it is truly the castanet ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... other. "Your tongue goes like the clapper of a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this herring. Understand first, however, that there are ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... electrostatic charge, involving the ringing of bells by electrostatic attraction and repulsion. It is used in connection with a frictional, or influence electric machine. Two bells are employed with a button or clapper suspended between them. One bell is connected to one of the prime conductors, q. v., of the machine. The other insulated therefrom is connected to earth, or if an influence machine is used, to the other prime conductor. The clappers are hung by a silk thread, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... the glorious play of chess, and causes the memory of Hector to be consecrated by the foundation of a chantry of priests who are to pray for the repose of his soul. A third finally condemns the erring Cressid to be stricken with leprosy, and to wander about with cup and clapper, like the unhappy lepers in the great cities of the Middle Ages. Everything, in short, is transfused by the spirit of the adapters' own times; and so far are these writers from any weakly sense of anachronism in describing Troy as if it were a moated and turreted ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... once a week, there was always a great to-do; Mrs. Iden, like nervous people, was cross and peevish when she was exceptionally busy, and clapper-clawed Iden to some purpose. It chanced that Amaryllis one day was just opening an envelope and taking out a returned drawing, when Iden entered, angry and fresh from Mrs. Iden's tongue, and, seeing the letter, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... woman, or child, attacked by it would surely and slowly die of it. The leper was unclean: he was thrust out of the town: he had to live apart, or congregated in hospitals with other wretches similarly afflicted: if he walked abroad he wore a grey gown for distinction and carried a clapper as he went along, crying 'Unclean, Unclean,' so that the people might stand aside and not so much as touch his garments. And since he could not work with his hands, he was permitted to carry into the market a 'clap ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... Solomon Slept with his fathers ... I wonder he could sleep, After the razzle-dazzle ... Concubines! 'Twould take a pyramid to keep him down! And me ... That tumble's cracked the bell ... not stopt The crazy clapper, seemingly ... But, coffins— Let's talk no more of coffins: what have I To do with coffins? Let us talk of fires: I've always loved a fire: I'd set the world Alow for my delight, if it would burn. It's such a soggy, sodden ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... though the girls did keep calling her up at frequent intervals to see if she had any news for them yet. She became so tired of hearing the telephone bell ring at last that she stuffed a handkerchief between the bell and the clapper and sat down to read a novel and while away the time as best she could till her ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... anything but tea and bread-and-butter for her dinner. She was very deaf and infirm, all her joints shook when she tried to use them, and her voice quavered when she talked. She took the plate, and her hands trembled so that the tin dish played on the plate like a clapper. "Why," said she, overjoyed, "this looks just like Thanksgiving Day, ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... insanity the way we did. Here I am, rubbing noses with thirty, outgrowing my belts every year, and sitting eight hours at a desk without exploding. Am I the chap who climbed up sixty feet of waterspout a few short years ago and persuaded the clapper of the college bell to come down with me? Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails out of my hands ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... of a bell to the clapper came Pierre Radisson on the third day, well pleased with what he had done and alert to keep two of us outside the fort in spite of Ben's urgings to bring the French in ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... whole country a sixteen-year-old maid with any pretensions to intelligence who hasn't wept over little Cosette, been in love with Enjolras and "doted on" Gavroche and Jean Valjean! So ultra nice has the world become that we must skip the Canticles. Shakespeare's plays must now be clapper-clawed to make them palatable. Alexander Pope's philosophic rhyme must be deleted with dashes. Walt Whitman's poetry is too strong for the average stomach. But we continue to fire into the bosoms of our families the daily press with its specialization of Hogan's Alley and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... enter the house in your absence. I should place my bomb and run a fuse from the bomb to one of the holes in this telephone box. I should tie the clapper of the bell down in the box with a bit of weak thread, a bit of thread like this, ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... the drum category. While there are many different forms of the same instrument, there are evidences of their all having at some time served the same purpose, even down to that strange instrument about which Du Chaillu tells us in his "Equatorial Africa", a bell of leopard skin, with a clapper of fur, which was rung by the wizard doctor when entering a hut where someone was ill or dying. The leopard skin and fur clapper seem to have been devised to make no noise, so as not to anger the demon that was to be cast out. This reminds us strangely of the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... which stands yet entire, except that the roof is gone. It is about sixty feet in length, and thirty in breadth. On one side of the altar is a bas relief of the blessed Virgin, and by it lies a little bell; which, though cracked, and without a clapper, has remained there for ages, guarded only by the venerableness of the place. The ground round the chapel is covered with gravestones of Chiefs and ladies; and still continues to be ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... he flew away, with the chain in his right claw and the shoes in his left. He flew far away to a mill, and the mill went "Clipper, clapper, clipper, clapper, clipper, clapper." And in the mill there sat twenty millers, who chopped a stone, and chopped, "Hick, hack, hick, hack, hick, hack;" and the mill went, "Clipper, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... cowbell—that was it; but why did it seem to come from overhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptly from one quarter to another—from left to right and back again to left? And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even the breachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle a cowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and the sky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and flashing ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... of hawk, represents Old Fr. quercerelle (crecerelle), "a kastrell" (Cotgrave). Crecerelle is a diminutive of crecelle, a rattle, used in Old French especially of the leper's rattle or clapper, with which he warned people away from his neighbourhood. It is connected with Lat. crepare, to resound. The Latin name for the kestrel is tinnunculus, lit. a little ringer, derived from the verb tinnire, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... is never tolled but upon the death of some of the Royal Family, of the Bishop of London, or of the Dean of St. Paul's, and then the clapper is moved and not the bell. In the stillness of night, the indication of the hour by the deeply sonorous tone of this bell may be heard, not merely over the immense Metropolis, but in distant parts of the country. The fact is well known of the sentry at Windsor, who, when accused of having ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... scaffold, a framework, has been erected to support that dome of silk; and that the wearer is merely an automatic machine by which it is made to perambulate. A woman in this rig hangs in her skirts like a clapper in a bell; and I never meet one without being tempted to take her by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various



Words linked to "Clapper" :   throat, taste bud, oral cavity, striker, organ, laudator, lingua, lauder, oral fissure, tastebud, extoller, clapper valve, gustatory organ, pharynx, rima oris, glossa, tongue, mouth, clap, bell, applauder, articulator



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