What does cleped mean?
"Cleped" is the archaic past tense and past participle of the obsolete English verb "clepe," meaning to call or to name. A sentence such as "the knight was cleped Sir Gawain" would have been entirely ordinary in Middle English, where "clepe" served as the everyday word for naming someone or something. The word descends from Old English "cleopian" (also "clepan"), meaning to call out or summon, and is cognate with similar calling-words in other Germanic languages. Although "clepe" itself died out centuries ago, its fossilized forms survive in literary quotation — most famously in Chaucer — and in the variant "yclept," which modern writers occasionally revive for comic or poetic effect when giving something a grandiose name. Today, "cleped" is essentially a historical curiosity: readers meet it in editions of medieval literature rather than in living speech. Its value lies chiefly in illuminating the history of English naming vocabulary and in lending an unmistakably antique flavor to deliberately archaic prose.
verb (archaic past tense and past participle of 'clepe')Archaic past tense and past participle of 'clepe', meaning called or named. Found chiefly in Middle English and Early Modern English literature.
- (Archaic) Past tense and past participle of 'clepe': called, named, or designated.
"In the old tale, the knight was cleped Sir Gawain."
"The village was once cleped Thorntun in the Domesday records."
"A poet of no small renown, one Geoffrey by name, was he cleped."
Before English had 'named,' it had 'cleped' — the ghost of this verb still haunts phrases like 'the artist yclept Picasso.'
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cleped
"Cleped" comes from the Old English verb "cleopian" (variant "clepan"), meaning to call, cry out, or summon, which itself derives from Proto-Germanic roots relating to calling aloud. In Middle English the verb was commonly used with the prefix "y-" (from Old English "ge-"), producing "yclept" or "y-cleped," the form immortalized by Chaucer. The plain form "cleped" functioned as both simple past and past participle before the verb fell out of use in the early modern period.
Related word forms
How cleped is actually used
Strictly archaic; encountered almost exclusively in Middle English texts, quotations of Chaucer, or deliberately antiquated literary prose. The related form 'yclept' survives slightly more often in humorous or mock-archaic modern usage.
Easily confused with cleped
'Cleft' means split or divided (or a crack/fissure as a noun), whereas 'cleped' is an archaic word meaning 'called' or 'named'.