What does clepe mean?
Clepe is an archaic English verb meaning to call or name — to apply a particular designation to a person or thing. It was once ordinary vocabulary: Middle English writers used it freely, and it appears throughout medieval literature, most famously in the fossilized past participle 'yclept,' as when a knight is described as being 'yclept' by a certain name. Over the centuries, everyday speech replaced clepe with the simpler verbs 'call' and 'name,' leaving it a relic confined to quotations from older texts, scholarly commentary, and occasional literary pastiche seeking an antique tone. Because it is no longer part of living usage, encountering clepe today usually signals either historical writing or a deliberate stylistic flourish. Readers benefit from recognizing it chiefly as a reading skill: understanding that a text which says a place 'is cleped' such-and-such simply means it is called by that name. The word offers no modern connotations beyond this air of antiquity, but its survival through famous works like Chaucer's keeps it familiar to students of English literature.
verbTo call or name someone or something by a particular designation. An archaic English verb, now found almost exclusively in literary or deliberately archaic contexts.
- To call or name; to give a designation to a person or thing.
"The chronicler wrote of the fortress that men did clepe it Ravenshold."
"In the old tale, the hero is cleped by many names across the kingdoms he wanders."
"Scholars sometimes quote Chaucer directly, letting him clepe his characters as he pleased."
If you've ever read that a knight was 'yclept' Sir Gawain, you've already met clepe — yclept is just its fossilized past participle.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of clepe
Clepe descends from Old English, where related forms such as cleopian meant to call or cry out, and it remained in active use through the Middle English period, appearing widely in texts like Chaucer's. It belongs to the Germanic family of words for calling out, though its precise deeper cognates outside English are not clearly established. Its best-known legacy is the past participle 'yclept,' formed with the old y- prefix, which survived long after the base verb fell out of common use.
Related word forms
How clepe is actually used
Clepe is archaic and survives mainly in quotations from Middle and Early Modern English literature, in scholarly discussion of those texts, or in deliberate pastiche. Modern writers who use it do so for antique flavor; ordinary prose calls for 'call' or 'name'. Its past participle 'yclept' is far better known than any other form.
Easily confused with clepe
Cleave means to split or adhere firmly, while the archaic clepe means simply to call or name something.