Wiktionary

click

See also: Click

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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Imitative of the "click" sound; first recorded in the 1500s. Compare Saterland Frisian klikke (“to click”), Middle Dutch clicken (Modern Dutch: klikken (“to click”)), Old High German klecchen (Modern German: klecken, klicken (“to click”)), Danish klikke (“to click”), Swedish klicka (“to click”), Norwegian klikke (“to click”), Norwegian klekke (“to hatch”).

Noun

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click (plural clicks)

  1. A brief, sharp, not particularly loud, relatively high-pitched sound produced by the impact of something small and hard against something hard, such as by the operation of a switch, a lock, or a latch.
    As I turned the key, the lock gave a click and the door opened.
  2. (British) The act of snapping one's fingers.
  3. (phonetics) An ingressive sound made by coarticulating a velar or uvular closure with another closure.
    Synonym: click consonant
    tsk is a click in English.
  4. Sound made by a dolphin.
  5. The act of operating a switch, etc., so that it clicks.
  6. (graphical user interface) The act of pressing a button on a computer mouse or similar input device, both as a physical act and a reaction in the software.
  7. (by extension) A single instance of content on the Internet being accessed.
    • 2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly‎[1], volume 189, number 2, page 48:
      The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […] and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention. Partly, this is a result of how online advertising has traditionally worked: advertisers pay for clicks, and a click is a click, however it's obtained.
    • 2013 July 26, Charles Arthur, “Porn sites get more internet traffic in UK than social networks or shopping”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN:
      Internet traffic to legal pornography sites in the UK comprised 8.5% of all "clicks" on web pages in June – exceeding those for shopping, news, business or social networks, according to new data obtained exclusively by the Guardian.
  8. A pawl or similar catch.
    • 1943, Chilton's Jewelers' Circular:
      A wheel, with teeth in which a click or pawl engages to prevent backward motion; or the same with addition of another click through which power is imparted at intervals to move the wheel.
  9. (UK, slang, obsolete) A knock or blow.
    • 1808, Richard Graves, The Spiritual Quixote, page 127:
      This roused the tinker's choler, already provoked at Tugwell's amorous freedom with his doxy, and he gave him a click in the mazard. Tugwell had not been used tamely to receive a kick or a cuff; he, therefore, gave the tinker a rejoinder, […]
  10. A limb contortion at the joint, part of vogue dancing.
Translations
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Verb

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click (third-person singular simple present clicks, present participle clicking, simple past and past participle clicked)

 
A mouse click
  1. (transitive) To cause to make a click; to operate (a switch, etc) so that it makes a click.
    • 1603 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, Seianus His Fall, London: […] G[eorge] Elld, for Thomas Thorpe, published 1605, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
      [Jove] clicked all his marble thumbs.
    • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter L, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
      She clicked back the bolt which held the window sash.
    • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “Song.—The Owl.”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, stanza 2, page 20:
      When merry milkmaids click the latch, / And rarely smells the new-mown hay, / […] / Alone and warming his five wits, / The white owl in the belfry sits.
    • 1918, The Cosmopolitan, volume 66, page 61:
      His voice rose in a clacking chatter; his long whip curled over the backs of the dogs, and, eager for the thrill of the trail, the malemiuts leaped out in a straight tawny line, whimpering and whining and clicking their jaws […]
    • 1956, Ethel Anderson, At Parramatta, published 1985, page 60:
      Dan clicked his tongue.
  2. (intransitive) To emit a click.
    • 1929, Arthur Conan Doyle, When the World Screamed‎[3]:
      Surely that picture will be fixed for ever, for I heard the cameras clicking round me like crickets in a field.
  3. (British) To snap the fingers.
  4. (computing) To press and release (a button on a computer mouse).
  5. (transitive, graphical user interface) To select a software item using, usually, but not always, the pressing of a mouse button.
  6. (transitive, computing, advertising) To visit (a web site).
    Visit a location, call, or click www.example.com.
  7. (intransitive, graphical user interface) To navigate by clicking a mouse button.
    I soon grew bored and clicked away from the site.
    From the home page, click through to the Products section.
  8. (intransitive) To make sense suddenly.
    Then it clicked—I had been going the wrong way all that time.
  9. (intransitive) To get along well.
    When we met at the party, we just clicked and we’ve been best friends ever since.
    • 1918 [1915], Thomas Burke, Nights in London‎[4], New York: Henry Holt and Company, page 75:
      After tea, the bright boys wash, clean their boots, and change into their “second-best” attire, and stroll forth […] ; sometimes to saunter, in company with others, up and down that parade until they “click” with one of the “birds.”
  10. (dated, intransitive) To tick.
  11. (transitive, India) To take (a photograph) with a camera.
    • 2014, Dhisti Desai, Innocent Desire, page 107:
      Brad immediately took out his Iphone[sic] and clicked a picture of the plant and posted it up on Google and clicked search.
    • 2017, Pankaj Upadhyay, Homecoming:
      They clicked some pictures outside his sea facing bungalow and left dejected again.
  12. (intransitive, India) To achieve success in one's career or a breakthrough, often the first time.
  13. (intransitive, India) Of a film, to be successful at the box office.
Usage notes
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Style guides for technical writers generally recommend using click transitively (for example: click the button), but intransitive use with on (click on the icon) is also widespread. The style guides do accept the use of in in phrases like click in the field.

Translations
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Interjection

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click

  1. The sound of a click.
    Click! The door opened.
Translations
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Derived terms

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See also

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Etymology 2

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Noun

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click (plural clicks)

  1. Alternative spelling of klick (“kilometers; kilometers per hour”)

Etymology 3

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From Middle English clike, from Old French clique (“latch”).

Noun

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click (plural clicks)

  1. A detent, pawl, or ratchet, such as that which catches the cogs of a ratchet wheel to prevent backward motion.
  2. (UK, dialect) The latch of a door.

Etymology 4

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From Middle English cleken, a variant of clechen (“to grab”), perhaps from Old English *clēċan, *clǣċan, a byform of clyċċan (“to clutch”). More at clutch.

Verb

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click (third-person singular simple present clicks, present participle clicking, simple past and past participle clicked)

  1. (obsolete) To snatch.
    • 1716, Thomas Ward, England's Reformation:
      ‘I take 'em to prevent abuses,’ Cants he, and then the Crucifix And Chalice from the Altar clicks.

Noun

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click (plural clicks)

  1. (wrestling) A kind of throw.
    inside click; outside click; cross click

References

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  • John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary

Etymology 5

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Noun

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click

  1. (US) Misspelling of clique.

Verb

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click

  1. (US) Misspelling of clique.

French

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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click m (plural clicks)

  1. Alternative form of clic (especially of a computer mouse)

Italian

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Etymology

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Unadapted borrowing from English click.

Noun

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click m (invariable)

  1. Alternative form of clic (especially of a computer mouse)

Spanish

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Noun

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click m (plural clicks)

  1. Misspelling of clic.
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