Clot

How to spell clot

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce clot

What does clot mean?

1. nounA thick, soft lump formed when a liquid, especially blood, thickens and coagulates.
2. verbTo thicken and form into a soft lump, as blood does when it coagulates.

Clot in a sentence

• noun

  The scan revealed a blood clot in her leg.

• verb

  A healthy wound will clot within minutes to stop the bleeding.

• noun

  A clot of paint had dried at the bottom of the tin.

• verb

  Certain medications stop the blood from being able to clot.

Where does clot come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Clot comes from the Old English clott, meaning a round lump or mass, and it belongs to a family of native Germanic words for things that are thick and clumped together, closely related to clod (a lump of earth) and the modern cluster. For centuries it simply named any rounded lump, whether of soil, dough, or congealed matter, before settling firmly onto the idea of thickened blood. The medical sense, a soft mass formed when blood coagulates, grew steadily from the 1600s as anatomy was studied more closely. In British usage the word also took a humorous turn, becoming mild slang for a blockhead or a dull, foolish person, on the logic that such a person is as thick as a lump. The short, blunt spelling has barely changed in a thousand years, and the single t is the only small trap, since the short o tempts some writers to double it.

How the word is built

• clot (single root, from Old English clott: a lump or mass)