cleek

Borrowed from Scots cleek.

• IPA^(key): /kliːk/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -iːk
• Homophone: clique

cleek (plural cleeks)

1. (chiefly Scotland) A large hook.
2. (golf, dated) A metal-headed golf club with little loft, equivalent in a modern set of clubs to a one or two iron or a four wood.
   • 1924, Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not... (Parade's End), Penguin, published 2012, page 58:

     He had begun at four, playing with a miniature cleek and a found shilling ball over the municipal links.

   • 1947, Malcolm Lowry, chapter 1, in Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock:

     They wandered together along the shore with a couple of old "cleeks" brought from England and some wretched gutta-percha golf balls, to be driven on their last afternoon gloriously into the sea.

cleek (third-person singular simple present cleeks, present participle cleeking, simple past and past participle cleeked)

1. (golf, dated, transitive) To strike with the club called a cleek.
   • 1914, Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey, Lady Cassandra, page 71:

     […] ready to acclaim his exploits, and listen to volumes about every hole, and the marvellous way in which he cleeked his tee off the bogie.

• eckle, Eckel, Kelce

From Middle English cleken (“to seize, clutch”); see English clutch.

• IPA^(key): /klik/

cleek (plural cleeks)

1. A hook.
2. The act of cleeking; a clutch.

• a-cleek

cleek (third-person singular simple present cleeks, present participle cleekin, simple past and past participle claucht)

1. To seize, clutch, snatch.
   • c. 1718, Allan Ramsay, Lucky Spence's Last Advice:

     Cleek a'ye can be hook or crook.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. To catch with a hook.
3. To hook or link together.
4. (by extension) To marry.