Forms: 4 cluchche, 4–5 clucche, cluche, 6– clutch. Also ? 4–5 cloche, 7 clouch. Pa. pple. 4–5 cloughte, 6–7 cloucht, 7 clutch’t, -ed. [The ME. clucche(n was app. a phonetic variant of clicche, CLITCH: cf. much, crutch, such, rush, shut, all with u from original i or y. The earlier senses of clitch and clutch were identical, but in their development they diverged. An association arose between clutch and ME. sb. cloke, whereby cloke was gradually assimilated in form to clutch, while both verb and substantive approached each other in sense: to clutch is now mainly ‘to grasp with clokes or claws,’ a clutch is now mainly ‘a grasp or grip with claws.’ The rare forms of the vb., cloche, clouche, were prob. from the sb. Cf. CLOUGHT.]

1

  I.  Obsolete senses.

2

  † 1.  intr. To bend or crook as a joint; = CLITCH. 2. Obs.

3

c. 1325[?].  Old Age, in Rel. Ant., II. 211. I clyng, I cluche, I croke, I couwe.

4

c. 1325.  E. E. Allit. P., B. 1541. His cnes cachchez to close & cluchches his hommes.

5

1377.  Langl., P. Pl., B. XVII. 188. The fyngres … powere hem failleth to clucche [v.r. cluche, clicche, cleuche, clyche] or to clawe, to clyppe or to holde.

6

  2.  trans. To incurve the fingers, close or clench the hand; = CLITCH 1. ? Obs.

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1595.  Shaks., John, II. i. 589. Not that I haue the power to clutch my hand, When his faire Angels would salute my palme.

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1614.  T. Adams, Devil’s Banquet, 24. Their hands clutch’t.

9

1627.  Drayton, Agincourt, ccxxiv. With their clutcht Gauntlets cuffing one another.

10

1703.  Moxon, Mech. Exerc., 76. The Blade is clasped … by the clutched inside of the middle and third Fingers. Ibid., 121. The Carpenters hold the Shank of their Chissels in their clutched left Hand.

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  † b.  To interlock the fingers. Obs.

12

1609.  Holland, Amm. Marcell., XXIX. ii. 360. Fingers clutched crosse one within another [complicatis articulis].

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1644.  Bulwer, Chirol., 29. With Hand in Hand and Fingers clutched one within another.

14

  † 3.  intr. To stick, to cling together; CLITCH 6. Obs.

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c. 1425.  MS. Laud 656. f. 1 (Halliw.). So a canker unclene hit cloched togedres.

16

  II.  Current senses, connected with CLUTCH sb.

17

  4.  trans. To seize with claws or clutches; to seize convulsively or eagerly. Also with away, off, up: to snatch with clutches.

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1393.  Langl., P. Pl., C. I. 172. A cat … he wol … To hus clees clawen [v.r. clochen] ows.

19

1818.  Scott, Hrt. Midl., ix. With all the fingers spread out as if to clutch it.

20

1832.  L. Hunt, Poems, 166. Then issues forth the bee to clutch the thyme.

21

1865.  Dickens, Mut. Fr., III. viii. Clutched off to a great blank barren Union House.

22

1869.  Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), III. xii. 198. The prince who had so vigorously clutched the straw at the moment of his birth.

23

1875.  Helps, Anim. & Mast., v. 133. I clutched up the cat.

24

  b.  absol.

25

1866.  Dickens, Reprinted Pieces, 156. Though he … scraped, and clutched, and lived miserably.

26

1879.  Proctor, Pleas. Ways Sc., xiii. 327. Very young children … distinctly clutch with the toes.

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  5.  To hold tightly in the bent or closed hand; to hold with a tight or determined grasp.

28

1602.  Marston, Antonio’s Rev., I. i. A 2 b.

        Tis yet dead night, yet al the earth is cloucht
In the dull leaden hand of snoring sleepe.

29

1605.  Shaks., Macb., II. i. 34. Is this a Dagger, which I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee.

30

1649.  Milton, Eikon., xviii. Wks. (1847), 319/1. The Sword he resolves to clutch as fast, as if God with his own hand had put it into his.

31

1703.  Moxon, Mech. Exerc., 216. Clutching the Shank of the Blade near the Hook-end in the right hand, to guide it.

32

1883.  Gilmour, Mongols, xviii. 213. Clutched in such a paralysing grip.

33

  b.  fig.

34

1619.  Fletcher, False One, II. iii. The sea … When with her hollow murmurs she invites me And clutches in her storms.

35

1697.  Collier, Ess. Mor. Subj., II. 90, A Thought (J.). A Man may … Clutch the whole Globe in one Intellectual Grasp.

36

1836.  Emerson, Nature, Beauty, Wks. (Bohn), II. 147. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who ever could clutch it?

37

  6.  intr. To make a clutch at, to make an eager effort to seize.

38

1831.  Carlyle, Sart. Res., I. viii. How we clutch at shadows.

39

1860.  Froude, Hist. Eng., VI. xxx. 32. He [Sussex] clutched at the canopy under which she was sitting, and tore it down.

40

1868.  E. Edwards, Ralegh, I. xxv. 639. As a drowning man clutches at the floating straws.

41