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clique

UK/kliːk/US/klik/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,250 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: cliques

A clique is a small closed group that keeps others out. A tight clique, cliques at school, form a clique.

The exclusion is what makes it a clique rather than a group of friends, and the word is always a complaint from outside. It is used constantly about schools, offices and committees. Note cliquey, describing a place full of them; and that the French word comes from a verb meaning to click, from the noise of a claque — a group hired to applaud.

Definitions of clique

  1. 1nouncliqueA small closed group that keeps others out.B2+

    “The popular girls formed a clique and wouldn't let anyone new sit at their table.”

clique is an exclusive group.

Where it comes from

French clique comes from cliquer, to click or clack, and once meant a claque, a group hired to applaud in a theatre. The sense of a closed set followed.

  1. French

    clique — exclusive group of individuals; (archaic or obsolete) group of people hired to applaud or boo, claque

  2. English, today

    clique

Built from

  • cliquer · French — to clap; to clack, to click

The is borrowed from French clique (“exclusive group of individuals; (archaic or obsolete) group of people hired to applaud or boo, claque”), from cliquer (“to clap; to clack, to click”), ultimately of origin. The and are derived from the noun.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Moods & Relationships

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clique in the wild

  • The clique problem arises in the following real-world setting.

    Clique problem

  • Then a clique represents a subset of people who all know each other, and algorithms for finding cliques can be used to discover these groups of mutual friends.

    Clique problem

  • The next four years resulted in several wars between the Anhui, Zhili, and Fengtian cliques, the latter representing the holdings of Zhang Zuolin in Manchuria.

    Beiyang Army

  • Adolescent cliques are cliques that develop amongst adolescents.

    Adolescent clique

  • Interacting with cliques is part of normative social development regardless of gender, ethnicity, or popularity.

    Adolescent clique

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.