Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also clapper-tongue) the tongue, esp. of a talkative person.

1609		Dekker Gul’s Horne-Booke 58: And to let that clapper, your tongue, be tossed so high, that all the house may ring of it .
1625		Massinger New Way to Pay Old Debts III ii: The great fiend stop that clapper.
1639		J. Taylor Juniper Lecture 74: It lyes with you [...] with the Clapper of your tongue to ring him a perpetual peale.
c.1642		T. Killigrew Parson’s Wedding (1664) I i: His Clapper is less dangerous than thine.
1665		Head Eng. Rogue I 337: One of my accomplices soon still’d the Clapper of his mouth, by a sound knock on the pate.
1675		C. Cotton Scoffer Scoff’d (1765) 242: Thy over-lib’ral Clapper / Is pleas’d his Merit to bespatter.
1678		Behn Sir Patient Fancy V i: She here! now for a Peal from her eternal Clapper; I had rather be confin’d to an Iron-mill.
1685		S. Wesley Maggots 155: There hangs a Clapper-alias-Tongue.
1694		J. Crowne Married Beau II i: I think the Woman has been Drinking, Christening her Clapper to drive Devils away.
1707		N. Ward London Terraefilius IV 38: As Tavern Bar-Bell’s always Ratling / So Gossip’s Clapper must be Tatling.
1713		W. King York Spy 52: A couple of Brawny brawing Shrews, well-matched in a Tongue Duel [...] their jangling Clappers were enough to turn all the Drink in the Neighbourhood.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 126: Where none but honest, none but honest, honest fellows come; / Where our Wives, our Wives Clappers, never sound, never, never sound.
1749		Fielding Tom Jones (1959) 237: My landlady was in such high mirth with her company that no clapper could be heard there but her own.
1764		K. O’Hara Midas III ii: I always chuck a priming at the tap, or / A cogue of Nantzy, just to oil my clapper.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 401: Why need he call out for help, whose clapper makes such a rout, / For when his tongue has once begun, / He’ll make a Thames-street fish wife run.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1791		J. O’Keeffe Wild Oats (1792) 66: Hold thy clapper.
1801		Sporting Mag. Nov. XIX 92/1: I told the landlord to hold his clapper.
1815		‘Snip in the Gallery’ in Vocal Mag. 2 Jan. 5: Hold your clapper, / Or your napper, / I will cleave.
1825		in Universal Songster I 35/2: [song title] The Devil Can’t Stop Her Clapper.
1834		Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) 15 Mar. 2/3: How they rage fret and storm — listen to the jargon of yon old lady’s clapper.
1836		Comic Almanack Nov. 72: I didn’t much mind her being a strapper, / But I couldn’t endure her terrible clapper.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 82: She put the kybosh on my clapper, by just holding up her finger and talking away.
1853		Bathurst Free Press (NSW) 18 June 2/3: Why, sir I beleive I vos a little tossicated, but don’t your vership see the liguor was bad [...] lost the use of my clapper.
1855		T. Haliburton Nature and Human Nature I 82: See if I don’t set their clappers a going.
1861		T. Hughes Tom Brown at Oxford (1880) 63: Old Murdoch was too pleased at hearing his own clapper going.
1878		J. Payne (trans.) Poems of Villon 139: Enough was left me [...] To keep me from holding my clapper still, When jargon that meant ‘You shall be hung’ They read to me from the notary’s bill: Was it a time to hold my tongue?
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Jan. 6/4: There was a man called William Bell / Who’d loved Liz well and long, / And spoke his love, though told to put / ‘A clapper on his tongue.’.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 17: Clapper, the tongue.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 435: He’ll think he was scammered overnight, and ’ll muffle his clapper for fear o’ losin’ his shop.
1900		Flynt & Walton Powers That Prey 102: Can he keep his clapper quiet?
1927		(con. 1917) J. Stevens Mattock 147: It’s up to you to hush the clapper of that fat madam of yours.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks.
1949		‘F. Bonnamy’ Blood and Thirsty (1952) 51: Yup, for all her clapper tongue, she’s modest.
1980		Barltrop & Wolveridge Muvver Tongue 42: A man who farts persistently is said to have ‘a farting clapper’.
1991		O.D. Brooks Legs 40: Although I sat in on the bull sessions I kept my clapper idle.

2. the mouth.

1901		Monroe & Northup ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:iii 137: clapper, n. The mouth; used in iron factories; ‘shut your clapper’.
1938		G. Greene Brighton Rock (1943) 56: He just thought it’d close her clapper.

3. a sandwich-man; thus the boards he carries.

1932

F. Jennings Tramping with Tramps 163: The boards which the sandwich-man carries round used to be called his clappers.