Cling

How to spell cling

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cling

What does cling mean?

1. verbTo hold on tightly to something, or to stick closely to a surface.

Cling in a sentence

• Wet leaves tend to cling to the bottom of the boots.

• Frightened toddlers often cling to a parent in a crowd.

Where does cling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Cling descends from the Old English verb clingan, which originally meant 'to shrink, wither, or shrivel up', as a dried leaf or a withered limb might. From that idea of contracting or drawing tightly together came the closely related sense of two surfaces pressing close and sticking fast, which is the meaning we keep today. The word belongs to the native Germanic core of English and has cousins in the older Scandinavian languages, where similar roots described things squeezed or pinched together. Over the centuries the older 'wither' meaning faded away almost entirely, leaving only the notion of holding on or adhering firmly. Because it is such an old, plain Anglo-Saxon word, the spelling is short and regular, and the only quirk to watch is the silent way the 'ng' simply ends the word without any extra letters.

How the word is built

• cling (from Old English clingan: to stick, adhere, shrink together); a single native root with no prefix or suffix