Claw vs Clew - What's the difference?
claw | clew |
A curved, pointed horny nail on each digit of the foot of a mammal, reptile, or bird.
A foot equipped with such.
The pincer (chela) of a crustacean or other arthropod.
A mechanical device resembling a claw, used for gripping or lifting.
(botany) A slender appendage or process, formed like a claw, such as the base of petals of the pink.
(juggling, uncountable) The act of catching a ball overhand.
To scratch or to tear at.
* '>citation
To use the claws to seize, to grip.
To use the claws to climb.
(juggling) To perform a catch.
To move with one's fingertips.
* {{quote-news
, year=2011
, date=October 15
, author=Phil McNulty
, title=Liverpool 1 - 1 Man Utd
, work=BBC Sport
(obsolete) To relieve uneasy feeling, such as an itch, by scratching; hence, to humor or flatter, to court someone.
* 1599 ,
* Holland
(obsolete) To rail at; to scold.
* T. Fuller
(obsolete) A roughly spherical mass or body.
* c. 1600 , , tr. Richard Surflet, Maison Rustique, or, The Countrie Farme :
* 1796 , , The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam :
(archaic) A ball of thread or yarn.
* c. 1604-5 , , All's Well That Ends Well , Act 1, Scene 3:
* 1831 , :
* 1889 , ":
* 1962 , , Pale Fire :
Yarn or thread as used to guide one's way through a maze or labyrinth; a guide, a clue.
*
* 1766 , , The Sermons of Mr. Yorick :
* 1841 , , The Murders in the Rue Morgue :
* 1870 , , History of the Norman Conquest :
* 1917 , :
* 1923 , :
* 1926 , Robertus Love, The Rise and Fall of Jesse James , University of Nebraska, 1990:
(nautical) The lower corner(s) of a sail to which a sheet is attached for trimming the sail (adjusting its position relative to the wind); the metal loop or cringle in the corner of the sail, to which the sheet is attached. On a triangular sail, the clew is the trailing corner relative to the wind direction.
* 1858 , Walter Mitchell,
* 1858 , The Atlantic Monthly , "":
* 1894 , :
* 1901 , :
(in the plural) The sheets so attached to a sail.
* 1913 ,
(nautical, in the plural) The cords suspending a hammock.
* 2000 , Ralph W Danklefsen, The Navy I Remember , Xlibris 2000, p. 21:
* 1864 , Andrew Forrester, The Female Detective :
* 1910 , "Duck Eats Yeast," The Yakima Herald :
* Macaulay
to roll into a ball
(nautical) (transitive and intransitive) to raise the lower corner(s) of (a sail)
As a proper noun claw
is .As a noun clew is
(obsolete) a roughly spherical mass or body.As a verb clew is
to roll into a ball.claw
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) clawe, from (etyl) clawu, from (etyl) . Compare West Frisian klau, Dutch klauw, German Klaue, Danish klo.Noun
(en noun)- (Gray)
Derived terms
* claw hammer * get one's claws intoExternal links
* (wikipedia "claw")Etymology 2
From (etyl) clawian, from clawu.Verb
(en verb)- Using her hands like windshield wipers, she tried to flick snow away from her mouth. When she clawed at her chest and neck, the crumbs maddeningly slid back onto her face. She grew claustrophobic.
citation, page= , passage=De Gea was United's hero again within seconds of Hernandez's equaliser, diving to his left to claw away Dirk Kuyt's shot as he got on the end of a superb cross from Stewart Downing.}}
- I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man's jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man's leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man's business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humour.
- Rich men they claw , soothe up, and flatter; the poor they contemn and despise.
- In the aforesaid preamble, the king fairly claweth' the great monasteries, wherein, saith he, religion, thanks be to God, is right well kept and observed; though he ' claweth them soon after in another acceptation.
clew
English
Noun
(en noun)- If the whole troupe be diuided into many clewes , or round bunches, you need not then doubt but that there are many kings.
- Both these creatures, by forming themselves in a clew , have often more the appearance of excrescences in the bark, than that of animals.
- If it be ?o, you have wound a goodly clew :
If it be not, for?wear't: howe'er, I charge thee,
- A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of philosophers to whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have given a clew of thread which they have been walking along unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the labyrinth of human affairs.
- The Fairy Paribanou was at that time very hard at work, and, as she had several clews' of thread by her, she took up one, and, presenting it to Prince Ahmed, said: "First take this ' clew of thread...
- on one side of her lay a pair of carpet slippers and on the other a ball of red wool, the leading filament of which she would tug at every now and then with the immemorial elbow jerk of a Zemblan knitter to give a turn to her yarn clew and slacken the thread.
- Therto have I a remedie in my thoght,
That, by a clewe of twyne, as he hath goon,
The same wey he may returne anoon,
Folwing alwey the threed, as he hath come.
- With this clew , let us endeavour to unravel this character of Herod as here given.
- To this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the slightest clew .
- We may here have lighted on the clew to the great puzzle.
- They had followed immediately behind him, thinking it barely possible that his actions might prove a clew to my whereabouts...
- And I brought the only clew to be found.
- Not often did Jesse James leave a clew to his identity when he galloped away from a crime of violence, back into the mysterious Nowhere whence he came.
- 'Mid the rattle of blocks and the tramp of the crew,
Hisses the rain of the rushing squall;
The sails are aback from clew' to ' clew ,
And now is the moment for "MAINSAIL, HAUL!"
- "Clew'" is Saxon; "garnet" (from granato, a fruit) is Italian,—that is, the garnet- or pomegranate-shaped block fastened to the ' clew or corner of the courses, and hence the rope running through the block.
- I went over and asked him to let down the clews or corners of the mainsail, which had been drawn up in order to lessen the useless flapping of the sail against the rigging.
- "Run aft, Haldane, and you too, Spokeshave. Loosen the bunt of the mizzen-trysail and haul at the clew . That’ll bring her up to the wind fast enough, if the sail only stands it!"
- The canvas running up in a proud sweep,
Wind-wrinkled at the clews , and white like lint,
- He taught us how to attach the clews to the ends of the hammock and then lash it between jack stays.
- Now, the fact is, I had started because I thought I saw the end of a good clew .
- Telltale marks around the pan of yeast gave him a clew to the trouble.
- The clew , without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze of Continental politics, was in his hands.