clamper

From clamp +‎ -er.

clamper (plural clampers)

1. One who, or that which, clamps.

   If you park your car in a no-parking zone, watch out for clampers.

2. An attachment with sharp metal prongs, attached to a boot or shoe to enable the wearer to walk securely upon ice.

   Synonyms: crampon, creeper

   • 1853-1855, Elisha Kane, Arctic Explorations: the Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin

     Both divisions are provided with clampers, to steady them and their sledges on the irregular ice-surfaces […]

3. (electronics) A circuit that restricts the amplitude of a waveform.

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

clamper (third-person singular simple present clampers, present participle clampering, simple past and past participle clampered)

1. To crimp.
   • 1883, Pamphlets on Forestry - Volume 11, page 20:

     Scratch-cutters are used on the tenons to give them a rough glue-holding surface, the ends of tenons are then clampered a little so they will readily enter the hub-mortise.

   • 1900, The Age of Steel - Volume 88, page 15:

     The punch was then removed and the edge of the hole in the pad clampered.

   • 1968, India. Office of the Development Commissioner, Small-Scale Industries, Small Scale Industries in India, page 276:

     An engineering unit faced with the problem of changing every time boring tool and clampering tool for reboring the cylinder and clampering the edges of bores of automobile cylinder blocks, which involved a huge waste of time.

   • 2000, Daniel J. Ryan, Job Search Handbook for People with Disabilities, →ISBN:

     A person with epilepsy, employed as a "Burrer B" — an individual who removes burrs and rough edges from commercial and industrial machine parts — uses hand tools, files, burr knives, scrapers, and clampering tools.

2. (obsolete) To join in an unsystematic or haphazard fashion.
   • 1886, Thomas Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, volume 1, page 359:

     But this Netherlands is the main bar; I have no pluck in me for such things at present — yet it must be clampered together in some shape, and shall if I keep wagging.

   • 1894, Publications of the Navy Records Society, volume 2, page 298:

     The ship's masts were oak and clampered together, nothing worth.

   • 1994, Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, →ISBN, page 275:

     Unlike Foxe, who avoided extensive discussion of the Book of Common Prayer (already a source of contention among the Marian exiles) and devoted long, debunking discussions to the Roman service ( "declaring . . . how and by whom this popish or rather apish mass became so clampered and patched together with so many divers and sundry additions"— 6.368 ), Hooker takes the very form of the English prayerbook as the structural matrix for his argument and welcomes the papal origin of many of its elements.

3. To move in a noisy and clumsy manner.
   • 1823, John Galt, Ringan Gilhaize; Or, The Times of the Convenanters, page 197:

     Eh! is nae that Ecclesfield's foot clampering wi' his spurs at the door?

   • 1838, John Roby, Seven weeks in Belgium, Switzerland, Lombardy, Piedmont, Savoy:

     A troop of Zurich yeomanry, having been reviewed, were "clampering," it could not be called prancing, on their great heavy steeds, through the town, to the great wonder and admiration of the idlers and their assistants, who were lounging about in considerable numbers.

   • 1861, W. S. Woodin's Cabinet of Curiosities:

     But who is this, clampering in his hobnailed boots, in a state of mingled perplexity, perspiration, loquacity, hoarseness, velveteen, clasp-knife and bread and cheese ?

4. To complain in an irritating manner.
   • 1844, The Spottiswoode Miscellany, page 149:

     Sir James Areskine also perceaving he prevailed nothing by clampering with the Bishop of Clogher, he desired to be reconciled to the Bishop, and soon after died at Dublin, where the Bishop of Clogher was requested by his sone and other friends to make his funeral sermon, and did (so) accordingly.

   • 1933, International Journal of Religious Education, volume 10, page 5:

     Delivered from the clampering clutch of self, we are built up into a re-collected consciousness of God.

   • 1999, Philip Sidney, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The Old Arcadia), →ISBN, page 308:

     But well he found that who is too busy in the foundation of a house may pull the building about his ears ; for the people, already tired with their own divisions (of which his clampering had been a principal nurse), and beginning now to espy a haven of rest, hated anything that should hinder them from it.

• reclamp