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Dictionary of Phrase and Fable—C

Clinch

To bend the point of a nail after it is driven home. The word is sometimes written clench, from the French clenche, the lift of a latch. (German, klinke; Dutch, klinken, to rivet.) (See page 261, col. 1, Clench)

That was a clincher.

That argument was not to be gainsaid, that remark drove the matter home, and fixed it “as a nail in a sure place.”

A lie is called a clincher from the tale about two swaggerers, one of whom said, “I drove a nail right through the moon.” “Yes,” said the other, “I remember it well, for I went the other side and clinched it.” The French say, Je lui ai bien rivé son clou (I have clinched his nail for him).

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894

Clinker

Climb

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Clinch

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