Clout

A heavy blow, a punch, a wallop.

Anoth­er word that I under­stood only from con­tex­tu­al clues. «His word car­ries a lot of clout» implies import and respect. This is how the word is most often used, in my expe­ri­ence. I’ve begun read­ing Stephen King’s On Writ­ing. Just a few pages in he writes some­thing about see­ing babysit­ters and nan­nies «wind up and clout the kids». It occurred to me with the vio­lence of an idea one should have known all along, that there might be more to the mean­ing of the word than I had giv­en credit.

It turns out I was right. It was well-worth the trip upstairs to look the word up, and now no mat­ter how good or bad King’s book turns out to be, it has already made itself worth the effort of fin­ish­ing it.

The word is rich­er now. Its com­mon usage no longer arbi­trary but col­or­ful and use­ful. One’s word car­ry­ing clout does­n’t just sug­gest a lazy form of per­haps grudg­ing atten­tion, but implies a vio­lence of idea or per­sua­sion that can­not be resist­ed or ignored.

Cool word.