(n.) A gripe or clinching with, or as with, the fingers or claws; seizure; grasp.
(n.) The hands, claws, or talons, in the act of grasping firmly; -- often figuratively, for power, rapacity, or cruelty; as, to fall into the clutches of an adversary.
(n.) A device which is used for coupling shafting, etc., so as to transmit motion, and which may be disengaged at pleasure.
(n.) Any device for gripping an object, as at the end of a chain or tackle.
(n.) The nest complement of eggs of a bird.
(n.) To seize, clasp, or gripe with the hand, hands, or claws; -- often figuratively; as, to clutch power.
(n.) To close tightly; to clinch.
(v. i.) To reach (at something) as if to grasp; to catch or snatch; -- often followed by at.
Example Sentences:
(1) Damn that Beltran, what a clutch postseason performer.
(2) When Guillem was approached by French Vogue to be photographed seven years ago she was presented with a clutch of the world's best fashion photographers to choose from.
(3) "I have just seen a piece of straw flying over, which the hon lady is attempting to clutch at!"
(4) An average of 241,273 viewers gathered round the television (hospital bed) clutching the remote (bag of grapes) staring at the small screen (out of the window).
(5) Expecting defeat, but somehow clutching on to hope … Well, Frank [Skinner] and David [Baddiel] wrote that part of the lyrics, but the reason I got them in after the FA asked me to write a song was that I thought it was only worth making if it reflected how it feels to be a football fan.
(6) On arriving in Cyprus, Mike was the only person present to celebrate leaving the clutches of Egypt’s national airline.
(7) I’ve known them for over 10 years,” said Eugene Ward, 43, clutching a bag of water bottles and beer cans.
(8) Aston Villa goalkeeper intercepts and clutches the ball to his chest.
(9) Despite the absence of a comprehensive deal, a clutch of local agreements have been reached, the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) said in a report last June.
(10) We have rescued 26 children from the clutches of human traffickers in the past 20 days and sent them to rehabilitation centres,” said Sanjeev Kumar, a senior labour official in Bihar’s East Champaran district.
(11) When I flew to Salisbury shortly afterwards, the man in the next seat was clutching a thick polythene bag full of small metal objects.
(12) Wearing a white dress, black jacket and patent leather sandals, and clutching her mobile phone and keys, she could be on her way to an office in one of the capital's new skyscrapers, instead of walking past a patchwork of bean and sweet potato fields en route to the village's tin-roofed administration offices.
(13) Pilgrims from all over the world, many weeping and clutching precious mementos or photographs of loved ones, jostle beneath its soaring domes every day.
(14) With Ward-Prowse and Jay Rodriguez still missing, Koeman is reliant on a small clutch of attackers including Dusan Tadic, Sadio Mané, Shane Long, Steven Davis and Graziano Pellè.
(15) On return to their nests, the birds immediately resumed incubation and laid a second clutch of eggs after 5 days at which time the first clutch was removed.
(16) In his attempt to justify the unjustifiable, Mr Grieve has clutched at a fragile constitutional doctrine and adopted a deeply dubious legal course.
(17) A practical preventive measure would be to encourage manufacturers to equip machines with remotely located spring-opening clutches.
(18) But I am trying to claw the innocent joy of Halloween out of the cold, deadened clutches of the Zombie of Forced Sexiness.
(19) To describe this course of action as "clutching at straws" is to flatter it.
(20) Shara Proctor, who might have had hopes of gold while Okagbare busied herself with the 200m, managed only two steps of a run-up before clutching at her left thigh and leaving the arena with her hoodie pulled sorrowfully around her face.
Rapacious
Definition:
(a.) Given to plunder; disposed or accustomed to seize by violence; seizing by force.
(a.) Accustomed to seize food; subsisting on prey, or animals seized by violence; as, a tiger is a rapacious animal; a rapacious bird.
(1) Another member of her circle, the rapacious slum landlord Peter Rachman, had himself become a symbol of the greed and materialism of the affluent society, adding more spice to the mix.
(2) Germany has many people in rented accommodation, but they also have much stronger tenancy laws and a much longer-term and less rapacious investment model.
(3) Eighteen years after first dipping its toe in the world of banking, Tesco is launching its first current account on Tuesday, and says it is targeting people fed up with "smoke and mirrors" and "rapacious" bank charges.
(4) Miliband offered little new on policy apart from a commitment to improve corporate governance so businesses are allowed to invest for the long term, and allow established shareholders to protect companies from rapacious takeovers.
(5) He was the most rapacious empire-builder of the regime, with huge powers over the economy.
(6) Capital rich but income poor older people sit in the cold rather than keep themselves warm because they are fearful of releasing equity in a rapacious market or desperately want to pass something on to their families.
(7) In the struggle against colonialism and racism, that's what's emerged: that black men are strong, and sexually rapacious but only towards women; homosexuals and white men are weak and feminine.
(8) Life for millions of people under the most rapacious and reactionary government in 150 years has diminished.
(9) Nor is the state rapacious: if you qualify, two-bedroom apartments in newish public blocks rent for around £150 a month, there are 40 sheltered housing units for the elderly that rent for less than £30 a month, and if you’re old and poor enough, someone will come and shovel your snow away for nothing.
(10) This is the standard model of rapacious capitalism, fueled and developed in the tech sector.
(11) Yet there are still too many obstacles to the free flow of scientific information, from rapacious publishers to restrictive intellectual property laws and unsympathetic research institutions.
(12) But while the brutal and vindictive treatment of Khodorkovsy has rightly sparked indignation abroad it has failed to ignite the same passions at home, where he is seen as a rapacious oligarch and sympathy is in short supply.
(13) But there is more to Beverly Hills than rapacious officials and suffering citizens.
(14) For Abbott, politics is a vocation, not a springboard for eternal political leadership or financial rapaciousness.
(15) This time around, rising house prices are producing the opposite: a feel-bad factor among young adults permanently excluded from buying and furious about rapacious rents, combined with a growing sense of despair among the middle-aged no longer able to move up the fabled property ladder because each rung is financially just too far away from the one before.
(16) Particular ire has been directed at Flowers because he worked for the Co-op, especially by those who still delude themselves that it lives up to its name as an ethical bank, despite recent events that have seen it fall into the hands of hedge funds and other such rapacious institutions.
(17) Norway exports its gathered knowledge about oil production to all parts of the world, including advising foreign governments how to secure the best deals from the hard-headed executives of rapacious oil companies.
(18) England had become a nation of penalty-missers, contract-outers, public-school twits and twats, bigots and Bullingdon club bullies, snarling bulldogs and rapacious bankers.A country in which even Labour leaders preached deregulation, prized unfettered wealth and puckered up to the world’s media magnates.
(19) If social rents are cheaper than market rents, maybe, just maybe, it’s not because social rent is subsidised – a lie debunked over and over again – but because private markets are rapacious and volatile, and will happily spew out the poor after making as much profit as possible.
(20) It treats them not as hopeless victims to be pitied with charity, nor as sources of potential value for a rapacious financial sector, but rather as human beings with an innate right to the wealth that we draw from our planet’s common resources.