Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’m kinda shocked this one isn’t already discussed. This is sortof an opposite. There seems to be no lack of examples:
he clamps up and becomes totally unapproachable.
He clamps up if I try to talk to him about us, like he can’t admit there’s a problem. I don’t know what to do any more.
She is comfortable enough in female company, but with the addition of gentlemen, amicable or not, she clamps up, she gets very uncomfortable
Part of him clamps shut – and when she goes silent in response he clamps up even more. He goes insomniac too.
i think she likes you but she can’t show it or she doesn’t want your and her friends to know that’s why she clamps up.
when she asks Chris about his childhood, he clamps up. “What’s wrong, Chris? Are you hiding something from me?
I tried to talk to her after when she went out the back, but she clamped up and took off.
Must be standard for some. The clamping upwards of the jaw when clamming up is obvious, and the metaphor from a clam, which many nowadays have never or hardly ever encountered, tends towards the obscure.
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The “Part of him clamps shut” example is particularly interesting. The part is probably the jaw, and you would not be likely to say “clams shut”.
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When you rebuff another’s attempt at conversation, are you being cold and clampy, I wonder?
There are some results from medical writings, several of them 19th-century British, which make it look like a standard phrase in a literal sense, but I am in doubt as to whether the “cold and clammy” meaning was in the authors’ minds.
The is so rapid as not to be reckoned , the perspiration is cold and clampy ; there is subsultus tendinum , and death soon closes the scene
the eyes hollow , and , when quiet , half closed ; the skin cold and clampy ; the pulse weak and ’ frequent ; and the bowels unopened
P remains normal, pulse rate increases ,confusion and cold and clampy skin. Epidural anesthesia. Decrease the urge to void and sensation of full bladder.
What is clampy skin? Skin with muscle contractions under it?
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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If I may add a little more fizz to the fuzz, climbing requires much clamping of body parts to gaps, branches, toeholds etc, and the past tense of climb used to be clamb. We still have ‘clamber’ of course, but that now suggests a kind of doltish clumsiness. Did we used to pronounce the silent b in clamb?
In a similar vein, though still ascending or descending, and carefully, I noted some time ago the use of clampon for crampon, but it clearly belongs here, with its kinfolk. And in any DIY or tool catalogue here in the UK, the sash cramp, that essential woodworking aid, is also known as a sash clamp.
What is clampy skin? Skin with muscle contractions under it?
I don’t know, but the similar word ‘clampsy’ seems vaguely familiar.
One of the signs or symptoms tend to be; serious belly agony, prolonged sickness, red-colored spots as well as areas around the skin color, signs involving bleeding, dark-colored bar stools, sleepiness as well as lessen awareness, trouble involving breathing and light as well as wintry clampsy skin color.
Other mentions seem to bring us back to an eggcornish clumsiness.
Arsenal dominated the ball possession and counter attacks although their defence was clampsy hence conceding two sloppy goals.
The receptionist is a bit clampsy, so please double check all the details from your end too.
His gait was broad-based with clampsy movements. The neurological examination, performed at the age of 3 years and 9 months, showed severe …
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I was trying to imagine what dark-colored bar stools would be like, but you can find them for sale, generally in sets of two or four, on the Internet. Or something else trying to pass for one; that would be a bad symptom indeed.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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