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''clause'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''clause'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260124202223-00-⌔

clause - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

clause (plural clauses)

  • (grammar) A group of words that contains a subject and a verb; it may be part of a sentence or may constitute the whole sentence, depending on the syntax in each instance.
    • ✤ Near-synonyms: sentential, sentence
  • (grammar) A verb, its necessary grammatical arguments, and any adjuncts affecting them.
  • (grammar) A verb along with its subject and their modifiers. If a clause provides a complete thought on its own, then it is an independent (superordinate) clause; otherwise, it is dependent (subordinate). (Independent clauses can be sentences; they can also be part of a sentence. Dependent clauses can only be part of a sentence.)
    • ✤ Hyponyms: main clause, independent clause; subordinate clause, dependent clause, embedded clause; and hyponyms thereof
    • ✤ However, Coordination facts seem to undermine this hasty conclusion: thus, consider the following:
      (43) [Your sister could go to College], but [would she get a degree?]
      The second (italicised) conjunct is a Clause containing an inverted Auxiliary, would. Given our earlier assumptions that inverted Auxiliaries are in C, and that C is a constituent of S-bar, it follows that the italicised Clause in (43) must be an S-bar. But our familiar constraint on Coordination tells us that only constituents belonging to the same Category can be conjoined. Since the second Clause in (43) is clearly an S-bar, then it follows that the first Clause must also be an S-bar — one in which the C(omplementiser) position has been left empty.      1
  • (law) A distinct part of a contract, a will or another legal document.
    • ✤ Mr. Waller adds that when the railway was authorised in 1897, one of the clauses of the Act authorising the transfer of the line to the North British Railway provided that that company should work it in perpetuity, and it was this clause that caused the interim interdict to be granted.2
  • (databases) A constituent (component) of a statement or query.

Verb

clause (third-person singular simple present clauses, present participle clausing, simple past and past participle claused)

  • (transitive, shipping) To amend (a bill of lading or similar document).
    • ✤ The question of clausing the bills of lading, so as to avoid “dirtying”, which impairs its negotiability, may also be looked into3
    • ✤ Any attempt to clause a Bill of Lading will be strenuously resisted by shippers, and they will obtain clean bills in the usual ways4
    • ✤ It was held that the bills of lading presented were in this case ‘clean’ as they contained no reservations by way of endorsement, clausing or otherwise to suggest that the goods were defective5
    • ✤ There is little authority in English law dealing with the liability of a carrier who unnecessarily clauses a bill of lading.6

Etymology

From Middle English clause, claus, borrowed from Old French clause, from Medieval Latin clausa (Latin diminutive clausula (“close, end; a clause, close of a period”)), from Latin clausus, past participle of claudere (“to shut, close”). See close, its doublet.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /klɔːz/
  • (Standard Southern British, Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /kloːz/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (US)
    • (without the cot–caught merger) IPA: /klɔz/
    • (cot–caught merger) IPA: /klɑz/
      • Audio (US, cot–caught merger): 🔊
  • (Scotland) IPA: /klɔz/, [klɔːz]
  • Homophone: claws
  • Rhymes: -ɔːz

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 6, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 300: ↩

  2. 1951 April, “Notes and News: North Fife Line, Scotland”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 281: ↩

  3. 1970, Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee, Report of the session, number 11: ↩

  4. 1978, Samir Mankabady, The Hamburg rules on the carriage of goods by sea, page 215: ↩

  5. 1990, Alan Mitchelhill, Bills of lading: law and practice: ↩

  6. 2004, Martin Dockra with Katherine Reece Thomas, Cases & materials on the carriage of goods by sea, page 104: ↩

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Secondary

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