Clique
nounA small, exclusive group of people who keep outsiders at a distance.
How to spell clique
6 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce clique
What does clique mean?
- nounA small, exclusive group of people who keep outsiders at a distance.
Clique in a sentence
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The office clique always took the same table at lunch and ignored everyone else.
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New staff found it hard to break into the established clique on the management floor.
Where does clique come from?
Language of origin: French
The word comes straight from French clique, which in earlier French meant a sharp noise or a clack and was formed from the verb cliquer, meaning 'to click' or 'to make a clattering sound'. By extension the French applied it to a band of people acting noisily in concert, then to a small set who stick together for their own ends. English borrowed it in the eighteenth century, keeping both the French spelling and a faintly disapproving tone, so that a clique is almost always an exclusive group that shuts others out. It is a close cousin of 'claque', the French word for a hired group of theatre applauders, which shares the same clacking root. The unusual -que ending, pronounced simply as 'k', is the spelling trap: it is a souvenir of the word never being fully anglicised.
How the word is built
- clique (whole French word; from cliquer 'to make a clicking noise', no separable English prefix or suffix)
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