club

From Middle English clubbe, from Old Norse klubba, klumba (“cudgel”), from Proto-Germanic *klumpô (“clip, clasp; clump, lump; log, block”), from Proto-Indo-European *glemb-, *glembʰ- (“log, block”), from *gel- (“to ball up, conglomerate, amass”). Cognate with English clump, cloud, Latin globus, glomus; and perhaps related to Middle Low German kolve (“bulb”), German Kolben (“butt, bulb, club”).

• enPR: klŭb, IPA^(key): /klʌb/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌb

A law enforcement baton

club (plural clubs)

1. A heavy stick intended for use as a weapon or plaything^Wp.
   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 12, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     There were many wooden chairs for the bulk of his visitors, and two wicker armchairs with red cloth cushions for superior people. From the packing-cases had emerged some Indian clubs, […], and all these articles […] made a scattered and untidy decoration that Mrs. Clough assiduously dusted and greatly cherished.

   1. An implement to hit the ball in certain ball games, such as golf.
2. An association of members joining together for some common purpose, especially sports or recreation.
   • 1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619:

     At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors. […] In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass.

   1. (archaic) The fees associated with belonging to such a club.
      • 1783, Benjamin Franklin:

        He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

3. A joint charge of expense, or any person's share of it; a contribution to a common fund.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Roger L'Estrange

     They laid down the club.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Samuel Pepys

     We dined at a French house, but paid ten shillings for our part of the club.

4. An establishment that provides staged entertainment, often with food and drink, such as a nightclub.

   She was sitting in a jazz club, sipping wine and listening to a bass player's solo.

5. A black clover shape (♣), one of the four symbols used to mark the suits of playing cards.
   1. A playing card marked with such a symbol.

      I've got only one club in my hand.

6. (humorous) Any set of people with a shared characteristic.

   You also hate Night Court?  Join the club.

   Michael stood you up?  Welcome to the club.

7. A club sandwich.
   • 2004, Joanne M. Anderson, Small-town Restaurants in Virginia (page 123)

     Crab cake sandwiches, tuna melts, chicken clubs, salmon cakes, and prime-rib sandwiches are usually on the menu.

8. The slice of bread in the middle of a club sandwich.

• (weapon): cudgel
• (sports association): team

• chess club
• sports club

club (third-person singular simple present clubs, present participle clubbing, simple past and past participle clubbed)

1. (transitive) to hit with a club.

   He clubbed the poor dog.

2. (intransitive) To join together to form a group.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Dryden

     Till grosser atoms, tumbling in the stream / Of fancy, madly met, and clubbed into a dream.

3. (intransitive, transitive) To combine into a club-shaped mass.

   a medical condition with clubbing of the fingers and toes

4. (intransitive) To go to nightclubs.
   • 1997, Sarah Penny, The whiteness of bones, page 4:

     In London you lived on beans, but you clubbed all night

   • 2011, Mackenzie Phillips, High on Arrival:

     I was rarely there —I was clubbing at night, sleeping during the day, back and forth to L.A.—but I had more money than I knew what to do with.

   • 2013, Fabrice Humbert, Sila's Fortune:

     He had been clubbing until the early hours

   We went clubbing in Ibiza.

   When I was younger, I used to go clubbing almost every night.

5. (intransitive) To pay an equal or proportionate share of a common charge or expense.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Jonathan Swift

     The owl, the raven, and the bat / Clubbed for a feather to his hat.

6. (transitive) To raise, or defray, by a proportional assessment.

   to club the expense

7. (nautical) To drift in a current with an anchor out.
8. (military) To throw, or allow to fall, into confusion.
   • 1876, Major-General G. E. Voyle and Captain G. De Saint-Clair-Stevenson, F.R.G.S., A Military Dictionary, Comprising Terms, Scientific and Otherwise, Connected with the Science of War, Third Edition, London: William Clowes & Sons, page 80:

     To club a battalion implies a temporary inability in the commanding officer to restore any given body of men to their natural front in line or column.

9. (transitive) To unite, or contribute, for the accomplishment of a common end.

   to club exertions

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

     For instance, let us suppose that Homer and Virgil, Aristotle and Cicero, Thucydides and Livy, could have met all together, and have clubbed their several talents to have composed a treatise on the art of dancing: I believe it will be readily agreed they could not have equalled the excellent treatise which Mr Essex hath given us on that subject, entitled, The Rudiments of Genteel Education.

   • 1854, The Eclectic Review, page 147:

     You see a person, who, added to yourself, would make, you think, a glorious being, and you proceed to idealize accordingly; you stand on his head, and outtower the tallest; you club your brains with his, and are wiser than the wisest; you add the heat of your heart to his, and produce a very furnace of love.

10. (transitive, military) To turn the breech of (a musket) uppermost, so as to use it as a club.

• clubbing
• go clubbing

Borrowed from English club.

club m (plural clubs)

1. club (association)
2. (golf) club

Borrowed from English club.

• IPA^(key): /klʏp/

• Audio

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• Hyphenation: club
• Rhymes: -ʏp

club m (plural clubs, diminutive clubje n)

1. club, association
2. (golf) club

• damclub
• golfclub
• handbal
• schaakclub
• skiclub
• stamclub
• tennisclub
• voetbalclub

Borrowed from English club.

• (France) IPA^(key): /klœb/, /klyb/
• (Quebec) IPA^(key): /klʏb/

• Audio

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club m (plural clubs)

1. club (association)
2. (golf) club

• (golf club): bâton (Quebec)

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

Borrowed from English club.

club m (invariable)

1. club (association; golf implement)

club

1. Alternative form of clubbe

Borrowed from English club.

• IPA^(key): /ˈklub/, [ˈkluβ]

• Audio (Latin America)

  (file)

club m (plural clubs or clubes)

1. club (association)

• (association): asociación f, cofradía f, gremio m

• club de fans m
• club nocturno m