"Clanker" — seen at Metafilter: "I’m being hustled by clankers"/"These agents are not trying to make money for their creators. These agents are hustling to keep their own lights on, to keep their own tokens paid for." Again, it seems as though "clunker" would do, but I guess robots hustling about make a more high-pitched sound, not so high that it's a "clinker." But I learn that "clanker" is a hot new word. Here's the NYT in August 2025: "How ‘Clanker’ Became an Anti-A.I. Rallying Cry/The term, which was popularized by a 'Star Wars' show and is rooted in real frustrations with technology, has become a go-to slur against artificial intelligence and robots."
By the way, the OED tells us that "clinker" is U.S. slang that originated in baseball — another word for "error." It now means: "An error; a failure, a 'dud'; esp. a film, song, etc., of poor quality. Also (occasionally): an incompetent or unsuitable person." I like this quote from the NYT in 1983: "Peer pressure combines with our fear of being wimpishly irrelevant to prompt most of us to include a few real clinkers in our otherwise carefully considered presents."
"Clunker" has meant a bad old car since at least 1930, the date of this quote found by the OED: "His Honor Rides—Mayor Frank Edwards as he appeared yesterday on his mighty charger for the opening of the Automobile Show of 1930, with Cap'n Dobbsie riding a ‘klunker’, one of the show's exhibits." It's meant "a failure, a 'dud,'" since at least 1963.
I think clanger, clanker, clunker, and clinker are all words based on sound: clang, clank, clunk, clink. I'll put them in order of pitch, low to high: clunk, clang, clank, clink. There, now, confusion conquered.
Clink!
*Rides off in Cap'n Dobbsie's klunker*
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I would have imagined 'clinker' to be older than baseball as I've usually heard it referring to the chunks of unburnable waste left in a coal fire that are larger and heavier than the soot and ashes. I suppose that meaning could have migrated from baseball, and given the period they might have developed contemporaneously
1. Seems to me clang and clank are the same pitch. Clang lasts longer.
2. "It's a clinkerrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!"
Clink also refers to a jail or jail cell. Perhaps due to the sound of a tin cup rattled against the bars of the cell.
Christopher B said...
I would have imagined 'clinker' to be older than baseball as I've usually heard it referring to the chunks of unburnable waste left in a coal fire that are larger and heavier than the soot and ashes. ***
You beat me to the punch.
I've been an avid baseball and baseball history fan for 65 years. I can't recall "clinker" being in common baseball parlance in that period.
My BFF Gemini tells me : "In historical baseball terminology, a clinker is an old-time slang term from the 1930s meaning either an error or a scratch hit."
And: "The term "clinker" has been used to describe the fused, stony residues of coal burning since the mid-to-late 18th century."
And: "This specific usage of "clinker" actually gave birth to a modern slang word we use today. Because a coal clinker was a useless, problematic waste product that clogged up a stove, the word evolved into a term for a "mistake" or a "bad musical note" in the 1940s. Shortly after, it evolved into "clunker," which we still use to describe an old, broken-down car"
American English is a wonderful language. You can hear a clang as you clink glasses while the door to the clink shuts with a clank.
Sometimes I just ponder my old Pink Floyd album titled Meddle or Metal or Mettle or Medal…
The title made me think we were going to be talking Mississippi State football. Nope. Carry on.
Most interested in where you and Meade came out on Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which I think one of Dylan’s best early songs. I knew the daughter of the police chief of Baltimore at the time. Bringing up this song really set her off. Dad believed the sentence was fair due to, his view, the crime was assault and not manslaughter. The “table” repetitions are memorable and, as with so many Dylan songs, I wonder about the inspiration/ origin.
"I would have imagined 'clinker' to be older than baseball as I've usually heard it referring to the chunks of unburnable waste left in a coal fire that are larger and heavier than the soot and ashes. I suppose that meaning could have migrated from baseball, and given the period they might have developed contemporaneously."
That meaning of "clinker" gets a separate entry in the OED. It's an older word with a different etymology, base on the Dutch "klinckaerd." It goes back to the 1600s, meaning a kind of brick and to the 1700s meaning "A hard mass formed by the fusion of the earthy impurities of coal, lime-stone, iron ore, or the like, in a furnace or forge; a mass of slag."
There's a third separate entry for "clinker," going back to the 1500s meaning something that clenches or clinches. That kind of clinker is a good thing, as in "By George! how fond I am of a good horse—a real well-bred clinker."
Don’t forget Colonel Klink.
On clinker, the definitive source is A Christmas Story: The Old Man, "Aha! Aha! It's a clinkerrrr! That blasted, stupid furnace! Dadgummit!"
"Most interested in where you and Meade came out on Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll... The “table” repetitions are memorable...."
We were listening to the song because the Clancy case got us into a discussion of jury behavior, and I said I thought there was no jury in that song, that it must have been a bench trial. I was right about that. (The Dylan line about an "all-white jury" is in "Hurricane.") Listening to "Hattie Carroll" in the car, I idly commented on the repetition of "table," sounding as if I thought it was a bit lazy, but Meade defended Bob, saying the repetition was meant to express the drudgery of Hattie's work:
"Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn’t even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table"
Someone at Reddit says: "In formal rhetoric, the term for that is epistrophe. Repeating the same word or phrase at the end of successive sentences or clauses." Someone else says: "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. I’ve read people interpreting the three table lines as to represent the mundane and repetitive nature of her own work." I sent that to Meade so he could feel even more right about his position (which I won't fight).
"I knew the daughter of the police chief of Baltimore at the time. Bringing up this song really set her off. Dad believed the sentence was fair due to, his view, the crime was assault and not manslaughter."
She would perhaps enjoy the parody I wrote when the obituary for William Zantzinger was published.
I read that the reason for the 6-month sentence was so that he could serve the time in the county jail and not be sent to state prison. It is said that the judges believed Zantzinger would be murdered in state prison.
By the way, the cane was a toy cane and the blow left no mark, but the attack was frightening and Carroll had chronic ailments that were exacerbated, and she died the next day.
"Seems to me clang and clank are the same pitch. Clang lasts longer."
Lower sound waves are longer.
"It's a clinkerrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!"
I have never been able to watch "A Christmas Story." I was a devoted fan of Jean Shepherd's radio show in the 1960s and loved his radio version telling his story in his own voice. I can't make myself want to see actors doing it.
The young folks these days refer to a good song as a "banger," so it kind of makes sense that a song that's not so good would be referred to as a "clanger."
I immediately thought of "clangor:" "a loud, continuous ringing noise, often made by metal objects hitting each other."
Often used to describe rock music in general.
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed
Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder “one,” guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride
In boatbuilding, a clinker-built boat is made with overlapping planks joined by rivets or small screws.
And I am pretty sure that clinker-built boats were being built long before baseball came along. Viking longships are an example.
I've heard "clinker" used, referring to the mess at the bottom of a coal furnace which had to be cleaned out every morning. Maryland 1950.
I've heard "clunker," of course, Virginia, Milwaukee, New Hampshire, 1980-2026
I seem to know what "clanger" means without any memory of anyone saying it so I suppose it turned up in British movies or mysteries. More often, someone "dropped a brick.".
The AI word "clanker" I acquired today right here. Few people I know spend time insulting robots but then my age group is only interested in whether robot floor vacuums can be made effective. At present, these robots leave the spiders triumphant in the corners or get stuck in them, emitting high-pitched squeals to summon help. Then you have to get down on those creaking arthritic knees to free them. The word is "useless" or, perhaps, "don't."
Cl... cl... cl... cl... a promising consonant digraph for an alliterative Dr. Smith insult directed at Robot B-9, an early example of machine intelligence. Add in the recurrent K sounds and the material approaches perfection, but we need present participle forms to make our zinger really zing.
"Shut up, you clanging, clinking, clanking clunker." Okay, but clanging and clanking are near-homophones. Still not as good as the wizard's put-down the Tin Man, that "clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk."
Althouse said...
"I think clanger, clanker, clunker, and clinker are all words based on sound: clang, clank, clunk, clink. I'll put them in order of pitch, low to high: clunk, clang, clank, clink. There, now, confusion conquered."
Just the facts, ma'am
Now let's see if I got the facts straight here: Cleaning woman Clara Clifford discovered your clean copper clappers kept in a closet were copped by Claude Cooper, the kleptomaniac from Cleveland. Now is that about it?
“Clanger” in British English is one of those words that practically always appears in a set phrase with another specific word, i.e. “drop a clanger”. This means to make an embarrassing blunder, mistake, or faux pas.
Other words of this type include “kith”, “ado”, “bated”, “dudgeon”, “umbrage”, “fettle”, “fro”, and “turpitude”. They often preserve archaic vocabulary that was once in general usage but no longer is heard in any other context. They are known as fossil words, frozen idioms, or cranberry collocations —a fixed expression that contains a word found nowhere else, by analogy with the “cran-” of cranberry.
Don't be afraid of the clinker. It will make your foundation strong.
Quaestor with the (always welcomed) Dr. Smith reference.
"Silence, you ninny!"
]Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota has lots of exposed lignite veins that caught fire and turned the rock above to clinker. It's a beautiful, and uncrowded, place. If you go, check out the North Dakota Heritage Museum in Bismarck, with great exhibits on dinosaurs (lots of fossils in western ND) and prairie history.
Clanger is to Clanker as Banger is to Banker, or as Bunger is to Bunker, or as Hanger is to Hanker?
We used to call big pieces of wood tossed in the wood stove "clinkers." "Clankers" is the latest term for robots, or AI. We also used to throw people in the "clink."
I listen to Robwords and Jackson Crawford pretty regularly, and they often point out that similar sounding, or even identical, words with different meanings can travel into English by various paths.
justabill - the etymology provided by our hostess suggests there may have been more to the selection of that name than just a funny sounding word.
ronetc - yup, I thought of that, too.
Slang words corrupt as they pass through repetition. I hadn't worn what we called tennis shows in the forties and fifties since grade school. For some reason I picked up a cheap pair of sneakers c. 75-77 probably at Walmart. My oldest daughter, then in middle school, informed me they were "clickers." They were clearly uncool.
"Clinker", a term used in the manufacture of cement to describe the product exiting the kiln prior to being ground to the dust known as cement.
"I knew the daughter of the police chief of Baltimore at the time. Bringing up this song really set her off. Dad believed the sentence was fair due to, his view, the crime was assault and not manslaughter."
I thought the rule was, you take your victim as you find him, so if you tap someone on the shoulder and they have a stroke and die, you caused it and are a murderer.
As usual I’m late to the party, but clinker as a term to describe the misfired products of a kiln (clinker bricks, for example) predates the baseball usage and is rooted in the sound they make when struck.
yep. When I was growing up a clinker was big chunks of coal ash that had to be removed to make way for more coal.
My wife's brother calls those large pieces of firewood chucked into the stove: hooters. My wife frowns on my usage of that term.
Clonk! As in “I would clonk my brother’s head with a book.”
Greetings from the Yookay. A car that Obama would call a “clunker” would over here be called an “old banger”. Not to be confused with Joan Rivers.
"Clinker-built" refers to a boat hull construction technique where the planks overlap slightly, producing a hull with distinctive horizontal lines, and better flexibility that a flat-laid hull.
"Clanker" for robots may possibly derive from the webcomic series "Girl Genius". Mech-savvy folk like the eponymous girl genius often built little robot assistants, called "clanks".
"For Science!"
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