Clubs

How to spell clubs

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce clubs

What does clubs mean?

1. nounOrganised groups of people who meet for a shared interest, sport, or social activity.
2. nounOne of the four suits in a standard deck of playing cards, marked with a black trefoil symbol.
3. nounThick, heavy sticks used as weapons or as implements for striking.
4. verbStrikes someone or something hard with a heavy stick or similar object (third person singular).

Clubs in a sentence

• noun

  The town has several chess and tennis clubs that welcome new members.

• noun

  He was dealt the seven and the nine of clubs in the first hand.

• noun

  The museum displays prehistoric clubs carved from solid oak.

• verb

  The ranger never clubs an animal unless it poses a genuine threat.

• noun

  Many clubs rely on annual subscriptions to cover their running costs.

• noun

  In this game clubs count as the lowest-ranking suit.

Where does clubs come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The word descends from the Old Norse klubba, meaning a heavy stick or cudgel, which Scandinavian settlers brought into northern England during the Viking age; English took it up around the 1200s. The original sense was purely physical: a thick lump of wood used as a weapon, and the related notion of a 'clumped' or 'lumpy' mass survives in words like 'clump'. By the 1600s the meaning had branched into 'an association of people' who 'clubbed together', that is, pooled their resources or gathered in a knot, much as a club is a thick gathering of wood. The card suit took its English name 'clubs' as a translation of the Italian and Spanish suit of batons, even though the French-style pip we actually print is a trefoil or clover shape. The plural and the verb form share the same simple ending, so the spelling is consistent across all these senses.

How the word is built

• club (heavy stick / association)
• -s (plural or third-person singular marker)