Thing To Be Glad Someone Else Is Doing Today: clooming.

I learned a new verb at the weekend: to cloom.

It seems to be a noun, too: you use cloom to cloom something.

Most of the dictionaries, when they deign to acknowledge the word's existence at all, give the definition to seal up with glutinous matter; but as they give no hint as to why anyone might want to seal something up with glutinous matter it really doesn't get anyone anywhere.

I myself came across the word because my son-in-law is making a straw skep, which, when finished, he will cloom. (A skep is a woven bee hive, usually made out of willow or straw.) The cloom is a mucky mix involving cow dung (apparently calves' dung is the very best) which you slather it all over the skep, where it acts as waterproofing, insulation, and draft-proofing.


photo by Edouard Hue

It's a job that needs doing, obviously.

But on the whole I rejoice that someone else is keen enough to do it.

Although, I don't know...the word is possibly due a revival when it comes to face packs.

photo by Omcadam - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52852016

Thing To Be Glad Someone Else Is Doing Today: clooming. This word probably used to be cloam, which means adhesive mud. The Old English clām means mud or clay. There was probably a West Germanic word something like klaim which meant to smear, and that would be connected as well.