cly
obsolete
cly is a verb meaning “To seize; to steal” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-L-Y, and it appears about once in every 25 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does cly mean?
verb
- 1
obsoleteslangTo seize; to steal.
noun
- 1
obsoleteslangA person's pocket.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of cly
- clies present, singular, he/she/it
- clying participle, present
- clied participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is cly?
Cly appears about once in every 25 million words in written English, the 152,206th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does cly come from?
Probably related to claw (compare Low German kleien, klaien (“to claw, scratch, grasp, seize”), dialectal German klauen, kläuen, kleuen (“to steal”), German klauen (“to steal, rip off”)). Alternatively referred by some to Dutch kleed (“a garment”); "to fake a cly" was to take a garment.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).