clapper

• Rhymes: -æpə(r)

clap +‎ -er

clapper (plural clappers)

1. One who claps; a person who applauds by clapping the hands.
2. An object so suspended inside a bell that it may hit the bell and cause it to ring; a clanger or tongue.
3. A wooden mechanical device used as a scarecrow; bird-scaring rattle, a wind-rattle or a wind-clapper.
   • 1896, Sabine Baring-Gould, Arminell, a social romance, Ch. 37:

     "Sir, sir! folks' tongues go like the clappers in the fields to drive away the blackbirds. A very little wind makes 'em rattle wonderfully."

4. A clapstick (musical instrument).
5. (sewing) A pounding block.
6. The chattering damsel of a mill.
7. (ice hockey) A slapshot
8. (cinematography) The hinged part of a clapperboard, used to synchronise images and soundtrack, or the clapperboard itself.

• (musical instrument): clapstick, musicstick

• clapperboard
• clapperboy
• clapperclaw
• clapperless
• clapper talk
• clapper-valve
• handclapper
• like the clappers

clapper (third-person singular simple present clappers, present participle clappering, simple past and past participle clappered)

1. (transitive) To ring a bell by pulling a rope attached to the clapper.
   • 1903, Baron Edmund Beckett Grimthorpe, A rudimentary treatise on clocks and watches and bells:

     It is still necessary to warn clergymen against allowing the lazy and pernicious practice of 'clappering,' i.e. tying the bell-rope to the clapper, and pulling it instead of the bell.

2. To make a repetitive clapping sound; to clatter.
3. Of birds, to repeatedly strike the mandibles together.

Borrowed from French clapier.

clapper (plural clappers)

1. (obsolete) A rabbit burrow.

• crapple

clapper

1. to click (the tongue)

• clappement

• “clapper” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).