Other forms: clams
A clam is a shellfish that lives inside two hinged shells. Dig for clams, clam chowder, clams on the beach.
It filters water for food and can bury itself in seconds using a muscular foot. One ocean quahog was found to be over five hundred years old, which makes clams among the longest-lived animals known. Clam up means to fall silent. Note that the word comes from an Old English word for a grip.
1nounclamA shellfish living inside two hinged shells.
“We dug for clams in the wet sand when the tide went out.”
clam is a shellfish.
Old English clam means a bond or grip, from a Germanic root meaning to press together. Clamp comes from the same pressing.
Proto-West Germanic
*klammjan — press, squeeze together
Old English
clam — bond, fetter, grip, grasp
Middle English
clam — pincers, vice, clamp
English, today
clam
From Middle English clam (“pincers, vice, clamp”), from Old English clam (“bond, fetter, grip, grasp”), from Proto-West Germanic klammjan (“press, squeeze together”). The sense “dollar” may allude to wampum. The sense "Scientologist" alludes to the Scientologist belief that human thetans (souls) previously inhabited clams.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA