[f. prec. vb.]
1. The act of clinging; adherence, adhesion.
1641. Milton, Animadv., Pref. Out of a more tenacious cling to worldly respects.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind., 166. The anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action.
† 2. A clasp, embrace. Obs.
1633. P. Fletcher, Purple Isl., I. xlix. Bacchus unborn lay hidden in the cling Of big-swoln grapes. Ibid., Poems, 254 (N.). Fast clasp’d by th’ arched zodiack of her arms, Those closer clings of love.
3. Contraction of wood with drought.
1664. E. Bushnell, Compl. Shipwright, 13. So there be no Clings in the Buldge.
4. A disease of cattle: a. A hidebound condition. b. A diarrhœa which makes sheep ‘clung’ or wasted.
c. 1800. in A. Young, Ann. Agric., XXX. 297. The cling … is supposed to be occasioned by an adhesion of the lights to the sides, and the cattle are frequently hidebound with it.
1802. Agric. Surv. Peebles, 401 (Jam.). Diarrhœa, or cling, or breakshaw.
1808. J. Walker, Nat. Hist. & Rur. Econ., 525 (Jam.). Ovis morbo, the cling dicto, correpta … confestim extenuata, morte occumbit.
