clipper

[ klip-er ]
See synonyms for clipper on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. a person or thing that clips or cuts.

  2. Often clippers. (often used with a plural verb) a cutting tool, especially shears: hedge clippers.

  1. Usually clippers. (usually used with a plural verb) a mechanical or electric tool for cutting hair, fingernails, or the like: He told the barber, “No clippers on the sides, please.”

  2. Nautical.Also called clipper ship. a sailing ship built and rigged for speed, especially a type of three-masted ship with a fast hull form and a lofty rig, built in the U.S. from c1845, and in Great Britain from a later date, until c1870, and used in trades in which speed was more important than cargo capacity.

  3. Electronics. a device that gives output only for an input above or below a certain critical value.

  4. a person or thing that moves along swiftly.

Origin of clipper

1
Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at clip1, -er1

Other words from clipper

  • un·clip·per, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use clipper in a sentence

  • Strenuous activities leaped into being, aboard the stranded clipper ship.

    Cursed | George Allan England
  • When the old clipper ship took from four to six weeks to cross the Atlantic, a weekly paper was printed.

    The Harris-Ingram Experiment | Charles E. Bolton
  • As we were leaving for Macào, the clipper ship Witchcraft came in, disabled, as I have recorded in a previous chapter.

    Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas | W. Hastings Macaulay
  • Whilst exercising, a clipper ship passed at some distance from us, bound to southward and eastward.

    Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas | W. Hastings Macaulay
  • "I was saving that name for the handsomest clipper-ship that money could build," he said.

British Dictionary definitions for clipper

clipper

/ (ˈklɪpə) /


noun
  1. any fast sailing ship

  2. a person or thing that cuts or clips

  1. something, such as a horse or sled, that moves quickly

  2. electronics another word for limiter

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012