CLEW

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does clew mean? 

• CLEW (noun)
  The noun CLEW has 2 senses:

1. a ball of yarn or cord or thread

2. evidence that helps to solve a problem

  Familiarity information: CLEW used as a noun is rare.

• CLEW (verb)
  The verb CLEW has 1 sense:

1. roll into a ball

  Familiarity information: CLEW used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CLEW (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A ball of yarn or cord or thread

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("clew" is a kind of...):

ball; chunk; clod; clump; glob; lump (a compact mass)

Derivation:

clew (roll into a ball)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Evidence that helps to solve a problem

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

clew; clue; cue

Hypernyms ("clew" is a kind of...):

evidence (an indication that makes something evident)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "clew"):

mark; sign (a perceptible indication of something not immediately apparent (as a visible clue that something has happened))

• CLEW (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they clew    ... he / she / it clews   
Past simple: clewed   
Past participle: clewed   
-ing form: clewing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Roll into a ball

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

clew; clue

Hypernyms (to "clew" is one way to...):

roll; twine; wind; wrap (arrange or or coil around)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

clew (a ball of yarn or cord or thread)

 Context examples 

As soon as he had got the clew he not only understood but corrected her error.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Fortunately, I had a definite clew, for there was a particular picture in his sketch-book which showed him taking lunch with a certain ecclesiastic at Rosario.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Not a word nor a sign did the dog receive, no suggestion and no clew as to what his conduct should be.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

As quietly as was possible, I clewed up the topsails, lowered the flying jib and staysail, backed the jib over, and flattened the mainsail.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Yet he betrayed a democratic fondness for Wagner, and the "Tannhauser" overture, when she had given him the clew to it, claimed him as nothing else she played.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He had come up from the south, but never a clew did they get of the owner from whom he had evidently fled.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Martin wandered on through the heavy pages, overwhelmed by the clews he was getting to the nature of things.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

No word, no clew, no hint, of the divine had ever reached him before.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

On the one shelf at the library he found Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse formulas of the one gave no clew that the ideas of another were obsolete.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

At the appointed time she was there; but shoes was the only clew to the mystery her mind had been capable of evolving, and she suffered a distinct shock of disappointment when Martin walked her right by a shoe-store and dived into a real estate office.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)