I. ˈklät, usu -äd.+V noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English clott lump, mass; akin to Middle High German kloz lumpy mass, ball, klōz lump, ball — more at clout
1.
a. : a portion of a substance cleaving together in a thick nondescript mass (as of clay or gum)
dodging clots of dirt from the horse's hoofs
b. archaic : a hard lump : clod
2.
a. : a roundish viscous lump formed by coagulation of a portion of liquid or by melting : a sizable blob or gob
clots of cream forming in the churn
b. : a semisolid coagulum produced by entrapment of formed elements of the blood in a meshwork of precipitated fibrin filaments
c. : something seen especially from some distance as an amorphous patch (as of color or light) or group
coloring the ridges with clots of shadow — H.L.Davis
a small clot of officials at the door
d. : an intangible knot resulting from a congealing and separating out from some moving stream
public opinion is beginning to congeal in two clots
3. dialect England : blockhead 2
4. : a closely grouped or intertwined or interweaving assemblage of living beings : cluster , clump
clots of black ducks migrating south
the Filipinos lived and worked in clots of five or six — John Steinbeck
almost a hundred marines, soldiers, and sailors drawn up into a clot in the street — E.L.Burdick
II. verb
( clotted ; clotted ; clotting ; clots )
intransitive verb
1. : to form into a clot
clotting masses of hydrocarbon molecules
spectators clotted around the more closely contested field events
when darkness seeped across the hill and clotted in the valley below us — H.D.Skidmore
2. : to undergo a sequence of complex chemical and physical reactions that results in conversion of fluid blood into a coagulum and that in vertebrates prob. involves the following course: shedding of blood, release of thromboplastin from blood platelets and injured tissues, inactivation of heparin by thromboplastin permitting calcium ions of the plasma to convert prothrombin to thrombin, interaction of thrombin with fibrinogen to form an insoluble fibrin network in which blood cells and plasma are trapped, and contraction of the network to squeeze out excess fluid : coagulate
transitive verb
1. : to gather, press, or stick together in a clot
perspiration clotted his hair
the milk was clotted by the addition of a coagulant before it was used
2. : to fill, strew, or overspread with clots
streets clotted with traffic
a mud- clotted pony
an elder grew leaning forward, its branches clotted with waxen blossom — Elizabeth Bowen
fruit and flower paintings that clotted the walls — Truman Capote
3. : to cause to form into a clot or clump that halts, obstructs, or stagnates
each night clotted the intership phones with “alerts”, warnings, and alarms — John Mason Brown
the meaning is often clotted by metaphor — Edmund Wilson
a people whose new, raw culture was not yet clotted with inhibition — R.L.Taylor