click, n.² — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

click n.²

also clique

[SE clique]

1. a clique, a gang.

1823		T. Creevey letter 3 June in Gore Creevey Papers (1948) 247: She sent a message by her ‘brother Brougham’ to come to her next Monday, and stay and be one of the supper click.
1871		E. Eggleston Hoosier School-Master (1892) 132: I hated Bill Jones what keeps the poor-house, and I knowed him and Pete would get you bound to some of their click.
1900		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘His ‘Moniker’’ Sporting Times 23 June 1/4: A sharp argument sprang up in our little ‘click’ / As to how to pronounce Kruger’s name.
1913		Sport (Adelaide) 18 Jan. 13/3: They Say [...] That A.B. and M.T. are the only ladies in the clique.
1915		C.J. Dennis ‘The Intro’ Songs of a Sentimental Bloke 19: Yes, me, that kids meself I know their ways, / An’ ’as a name for smoogin’ in our click!
1918		H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 25/2: CLIQUE (the).The prison’s hierarchy of criminals. [The conscientious objectors introduced the word; the hard guys appropriated and capitalized it.].
1922		W. McG. Eager in Contemp. Rev. n.p.: Vere was a blok goin’ dahn Tow’r Bridge Road, an’ ve Decima Street click se’ abaht ’im.
1927		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 20 Aug. 11/2: Eventually the model ‘S.M. Herald’ leader will read like this [...] We got the dinkum oil about ’im and his click.
1937		J. Curtis There Ain’t No Justice 164: They don’t half get up to tricks. Proper bastards. They’s a whole click of them lives in Sinclair Road.
1950		Hal Ellson Tomboy (1952) 34: What clique you with?
1951		J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye (1958) 137: Everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddamn clicks. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together.
1959		C. MacInnes Absolute Beginners 43: And all the click? [...] All the notorious Dockhead boys?
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 17: He and Tito had voted Bucky out of the clique.
1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 49: You know there’s a lot of streets where a whole ‘click’ is made out of punks who can’t fight one guy unless they all jump him for the stomp.
1974		H.L. Foster Playin’ the Dozens 91: New York City police report some 9,500 ‘clique’ members, ages 13 to 30, in the South Bronx.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 19: He was the war counselor of some click uptown on Lenox Avenue.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 77: You have yo’ little clique — dey yo’ tight partners.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 153: If you join a prison tip or click, you’ll never fit in out there again.
2000		W. Shaw Westsiders 31: Rah turned to a click — or clique — who called themselves the Criminals.
2001		(con. 1990s) in J. Miller One of the Guys 59: ‘If I’m gonna do somethin’, I’m gonna do it for myself, not for a clique’.
2005		L. Theroux Call of the Weird (2006) 200: If it ain’t got to do with me or my click, fuck a nigga!
2011		F. Bill ‘Crimes in Southern Indiana’ in Crimes in Southern Indiana [ebook] [H]e provided some of his clique’s extra muscle for Chancellor’s fights.
2012		‘Dutch’ ? (Pronounced Que) [ebook] The Drama Squad broke up into two clicks for the robbery spree.
2015		P. Beatty Sellout (2016) 63: A click of peewees, fresh out of cholo school.
2018		Unknown T ‘Mad about Bars’ 🎵 Bro-bro got the clique on waps.
2021		S.A. Crosby Razorblade Tears 168: ‘I cared more about my clique than I did my woman and my son’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

2007

UGK ‘Trill Niggaz Don’t Die’ 🎵 We keep it click tight, so when niggaz start lurking [...] Put my work in.

In phrases

click in (v.)

(US gang) to become initiated into a gang, thus click out, to suffer a beating to signify one has left the gang.

1998		Mayor’s Anti-Gang Office City of Houston, TX Street Gang Sl. / Gloss. 9 Nov.: clicking in Getting initiated into a gang.
2019		D. Winslow Border [ebook] How it is is you get cliqued up. Or you get cliqued out.

click up (v.)

(US prison) to form or join a prison gang, usu. one formed on racist lines; latterly extend to street gangs.

1932		L.E. Lawes Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing 277: Don’t click up too easily with fellows you don’t know.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 152: Aint no security in clicking up. If you got a problem inside, joining a prison gang only gonna worsen it.
2000		Other Side of the Wall: Prisoner’s Dict. July 🌐 Click up: To join a gang.
2006		letter 8 Oct. in GSG & Sons Nothing But Time (2012) 326: The stuff you see about prison life on TV is [...] over-exaggerated. People don't have to click up to survive in here. I stand as an independent non-affiliate.
2016		F. Stuart ‘Dispatches from the Rap Wars’ in chicagomag.com 🌐 If they’re in Diddy Grove territory and notice songs by O-Block, that tells them Diddy Grove and O-Block are likely cliqued up.

click n.2

In phrases

click n.²