Obs. [f. CLUSTER in sense of lump, clumsy mass + FIST; cf. CLUNCH-FIST.]
a. A clumsy-fisted fellow; a clown, boor, lout. b. A ‘close-fisted’ or grasping fellow; a niggard.
1611. Cotgr., Homme de porc & de boeuf, A grosse, base, rude, vnciuile, or vnmanerly churle, a clunch, a clusterfist.
1652. Urquhart, Jewel, Wks. (1834), 213. Cluster-fists and rapacious varlets.
1655. trans. Sorel’s Com. Hist. Francion, I. III. 74. My owne cakes … of which he never proffered me so much as the least crum, so base a cluster-fist was he.
1658. Cleveland, Rustic Rampant, Wks. (1687), 470. The Charter, which was no where extant but in the Noddles of these Cluster-fists.
1675. Cotton, Poet. Wks. (1765), 276. A whole hundred Cluster-fists.
So † Cluster-fisted a.
1611. Coryat, Crudities, 44. I noted many of them to be very cluster-fisted lubbers.
