clinker-built

Meanings

1. Of a boat or ship: where the hull planks overlap each other edge-to-edge, similar to shingles on a roof, and are secured by clenched nails or rivets for a strong, watertight seal.

Etymology

From clinker + built. Clinker is derived from clink (“to clench or fasten with nails or rivets”) + -er (suffix attached to verbs forming agent nouns indicating persons or things that do actions indicated by the verbs), and clink is a northern English variant of clench (“to secure (something) with bolts, nails, etc.; (specifically) to bend the point of a nail after it has been hammered through something so that the nail cannot be removed; to clinch”), from Middle English clinken, clenchen (“to fasten, specifically with nails or rivets; to enclose; to lock up; to clench (the fingers)”) [and other forms], from Old English clenċan (“to clinch, hold fast”), a variant of clenġan (“to adhere; to remain”), from Proto-Germanic *klangijaną (“to make cling or stick”), the causative of *klinganą (“to adhere to, cling to”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleh₁y- (“to glue, stick; to smear”).