clap n.
venereal disease, esp. gonorrhoea; also attrib.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Hist. of Jacob and Esau V vi: The best ende of suretiship is to get a clappe. | |
| ‘Bashe Libel’ in May & Bryson Verse Libel 77: Till at the last he caught a clapp / In Bever castle by the vale. | |
| Death and Buriall of Martin Mar-Prelate in Works I (1883–4) 197: Martin your mast, alas hath caught a clap. | |
| Eastward Ho! V i: Fond fables tell of old / How Jove in Danae’s lap / Fell in a shower of gold, / By which she caught a clap. | |
| New and Choise Characters n.p.: A Chamber-Mayde [...] If she catch a clap, she divides it so equally betweene the Maister and the Servingman. | |
| Astrologaster 51: There was not a Mayde that had not gotten a clappe before she was marryed. | |
| ‘The Kind-Hearted Creature’ in Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) I 90: This bonny Lass had caught a clap it seemes / by some young shaver. | |
| Parson’s Wedding (1664) I iii: He confess’d, she cur’d him of three Claps before he married her. | |
| song in (1969) 205: Fond fables tell of old / How Jove in Danae’s lap / Fell in a shower of gold, / By which she caught a clap. | |
| New Brawle 10: The best woman living, and the carefullest, may now and then get a clap, or a Disease from an unwholsom Knave. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Eng. Rogue I 196: Two or three terrible Claps, which cost me a considerable sum in their cure. | |
| Whores Dialogue 7: It was her fortune to die of an outlandish Disease, which she got by a Clap of a French coultstaff. | |
 | ‘Purgatorium Hibernicum’ in Carpenter Verse in English from Tudor & Stuart Eng. (2003) 412: Amongst this traine, who (thinke you) espied he / But his old mistress, Madam Dydy? – / That pin’d to death, the fawning strapp! / Some say for love, some of the clapp . | |
| ‘Dildoides’ in Rochester & Others Works (1739) 185: Lechers, whom Clap or Drink disable, / Might here have Dildoes to their Navel. | |
| ‘A Satyr’ Poems 171: To the whole Tribe would scarce a Tester give. But fifty Guinnies for a Whore and Clap! | |
| Pagan Prince 4: This Tutor dy’d of a Clap which he got in his Old Age. | |
| Proc. Old Bailey 14 Oct. n.p.: Her Mother [...] took her to a Midwife, who searched her, and found that she had been very much abused, and had got a great Clap, which the Prisoner had given her. | |
| Love and a Bottle I i: ’Tis less Slavery to be Apprentice to a famous Clap-Surgeon, than to a Lover. | |
| Hudibras Redivivus I:9 6: Who had full Twenty Years in Town / Retail’d her Favours up and down, / ’Till she had burnt with Claps and P—xes, / More standing Ware than Sampson’s Foxes. | |
| Fair Quaker of Deal II i: There’s many a lad in the Navy gets a Clap before the Ships Moor’d. | |
| Lucky Spence’s Last Advice [ballad] On them that Drinks, and disna Pay, / But takes a Snack and rins away, / may't be their Hap / Never to want, a Gonorhaea / or rotten Clap. | |
| in Pills to Purge Melancholy III 337: You’re all sent crawling to the Gravel-pits: / Pretending Claps, there languishing you lie. | |
| Authentick Memoirs of Sally Salisbury 39: A certain Comedian, in his Days of Pleasure [...] found his Armour unfortunately attended by a Clap. | |
| Proceedings at Sessions (City of London) Jan. 26/2: Advert for Dr. R. Nelson’s most sure, and long experienc’d Anti-Venereal Compound [...] For the true Cure of fresh CLAPS; (and all the lurking Relicks or Remains of old Ones) [...] In a very small space of time (living temperately) it rids away a mild CLAP. | |
| ‘Armour’ in Potent Ally 3: The hot daring Youth [...] now tormented sore with scalding Heat / Of Urine, dread Fore-runner of a Clap! | |
| ‘The Intrigues of Jove’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 296: And was he not damnably fool’d / I wish he had met with a c—p. | |
| Life and Uncommon Adventures 29: Had it been something for a Cl-p or P-x it might do. | |
| Homer Travestie (1764) I 87: For some bitch / Had given half the troops the itch; / And by a like unseen mishap, / The other half had got the cl—p. | |
![[WI]](/static/img/flags/wi.png "West Indies") | West India Customs and Manners 28: The first symptom of a c--p is a prickling pain, and afterwards a scalding in making of water. | |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Waterfordiana 15: A servant girl admitted the embraces of a gentleman, a casual acquaintance, who was suffering from gonorrhœa or clap. | |
| Boston Satirist (Boston, MA) 24 Mar. n.p.: What caused their flight, it sounded like a slap, / A lurking boy behind me, whiskpers Clap. | |
| Cythera’s Hymnal in (1969) 375: Claps that set at nought and sold him, / Pox that burned him grievously. | |
| ‘Julien’s Concert’ Pearl 13 July 11: The fingering of the double-bass she thought was rather slack, / And wondered Julien should engage a man who’d got the clap. | |
| Crissie 73: ‘Spoofed me for a cool thou, and then gave me the clap!’. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | diary 11 Jan. Wine, Women and War (1926) 287: Physical exam — crabs, cooties and clap. Scared to death, but O.K. | |
| Ulysses 146: That quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up in all the greenhouses. | |
| Three Generations of the Same (1963) 102: I also got a dose of the clap. | |
| The Well of Lycopolis’Complete Poems n.p.: ‘...I remember during the War / kids carrying the clap to school under their pinnies’. | |
| ‘Till the Cows Come Home’ [song title] Every time I fuck the mens I give em the doggone claps. | |
| Tropic of Capricorn (1964) 84: Everybody has the clap sometime or other. But not syph! | |
| Really the Blues 59: The girls stayed put until they ground out the thousand [dollars] or got a slap from Mr. Clap. | |
| ‘Friends’ Coll. Stories (1990) 274: The whole tremendous length of it was hurting, burning as if he had the claps. | |
| Down Among the Meths Men 91: The Jock didn’t get his dose of clap from here; he’d had it before. | |
| (con. 1920s) South of Heaven (1994) 213: I’d probably be dead right now of syph or clap. | |
| All Bull 35: They’ve got some lovely diseases out there and the women are all riddled with the clap. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Kings X Hooker 14: ‘I know ... by the time you were seventeen you already had your second dose of clap’. | |
| Glitter Dome (1982) 14: I happen to know that in Hollywood patrol right now the clap’s as common as a head cold. | |
| Dict. Aus. Swearing & Sex Sayings 26: CLAP — All types of sexually transmitted diseases. | |
| Fixx 67: There are no games at the moment because most of the team have got something called the clap. | |
| Homeboy 18: Holy Hubert, as common a Strip pestilence as the clap. | |
| Yes We Have No 98: I caught my first dose of clap here. | |
| 9 Aug. 🌐 It would send a bad message to the kids if one of the leading bloggers admitted to having a generous dose of the clap. | |
| Old Scores [ebook] The clap treatments of the prostitutes in the [...] area. | |
| (con. 1963) November Road 8: Trouble in this business had a way of spreading, just like a cold or the clap. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | February’s Son 183: ‘What can I tell you? Some of us have just got it.’ ‘The clap you mean!’. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 63: ‘[Jack Kenedy’s] a dipshit. He screwed Anita Ekberg and gave Jackie the clap. | |
| Empty Wigs (t/s) 504: My Dad got the MC but we never talked about it... My Dad got the clap but we never talked about it... |
In compounds
a clinic specializing in venereal diseases.
| Tales of the City (1984) 179: So here’s our hero in the middle of all this [...] hoping to hell the Clap Clinic doesn’t call this week. | |
| letter 12 Mar. Smiling in Slow Motion (2000) 96: White-tiled and antiseptic, almost like the waiting room for the clap clinic. | |
| (ref. to 1982) Anti-Nowhere League Official Site 🌐 The tour finished at the ‘Peppermint Lounge’ in New York which turned into a mass riot and we all ended up in the clap clinic. | |
| Panopticon (2013) 66: ‘Where are you off to?’ I ask [...] ‘Clap-clinic. Later, Anais’. |
? venereally diseased semen.
| Cythera’s Hymnal 23: Dean Trench as a metaphor uses / To typify clap-juice and spend. | |
| Pearl 1 127: There was a young man of Peru, / Who lived upon clap juice and spew. |
(US) a general insult, lit. one who has an orally-based STD.
| The Same Old Grind 51: Foots twisted out of reach [...] ‘I’m not that hard up, clapmouth’. |
? a form of condom or prophylactic against venereal disease.
| Cythera’s Hymnal 22: One lays his barren old pin to rest / In the folds of a clap-rag for life. |
(US) a venereal disease clinic or hospital ward.
| Battle Cry (1964) 280: The other three are in the clap shack at Silverstream Hospital. | |
| (con. WWII) Barren Beaches of Hell 38: Haven’t you spent enough time in the clap shack? | |
| [play title] In the Clap Shack. | |
| (con. WWII) Flights of Passage 79: The flight was a unit and it couldn’t function [...] with one member in the clap shack. | |
| Frank Capra 121: The pharmacist directed him to a clap shack [...] It was run by a Scotsman who called himself a doctor but was actually a quack. | |
| (ref. to WWII) Boys of the Battleship N. Carolina 341: What did we call the hospital corpsmen?’ ‘Pecker checker.’ [...] What did we call chipped beef?’ ‘[...] ‘Shit on a shingle.’ [...] ‘How about that room in sick bay for nevereal disease? ‘You mean the clap shack’. |
(US) the penis (not necessarily diseased).
| Pimp for the Dead [ebook] ‘[S]he [i.e. a prostitute] has to let a lot of strangers stick their clap stick in her’. |
see separate entry.
SE in slang uses
In compounds
a bailiff or watchman.
| in Nares (1822) 164: Clap-shoulder serjeants get the devil and all, / By begg’ring and by bringing men in thrall. |
see separate entry.
In phrases
(US) of religious services, group songs, etc., characterized by upbeat singing and clapping.
| Into the Deep 74: The tune is slow and somber [...] unlike many of the other clap-happy songs we sang at camp. |
a glass of brandy.
| Life in London (1869) 266: Now and then a ‘clap of thunder,’ with a damper to make all cool again. |
an arrest for debt; note extrapolation in cit. c.1625.
| Merry Knack to Know a Knave A3: And yet Honesty can clap a knaue on the shoulder for al his brauerie. | |
| Woman never Vext 63: Your husband threatened to arrest us; my Shoulders love no such clapping. | |
| , , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| Dundee, Perth & Cupar Advertiser 7 Nov. 2/7: He gave him a clap on the shoulder and proceeded to handcuff him. |