This word is acceptable for play in the US & UK dictionaries that are being used in the following games:

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v. To close tightly: clench one's teeth; clenched my fists in anger.

v. To grasp or grip tightly: clenched the steering wheel.

v. To clinch (a bolt, for example).

v. Nautical To fasten with a clinch.

n. A tight grip or grasp.

n. Something, such as a mechanical device, that clenches or holds fast.

n. Nautical See clinch.

n. Tight grip.

n. A seal that is applied to formed thin-wall bushings.

v. To squeeze; to grip or hold tightly.

noun-and-verb-transitive. See clinch.

. To nail or fasten.

To secure or fasten, as a nail, staple, or other metallic fastening, by beating down the point after it has been driven through something; rivet.

To bring together and set firmly, as the teeth; double up tightly, as the hands.

To grasp or seize firmly or convulsively; gripe.

Figuratively, to fix or secure by a finishing touch or blow; confirm, as an argument or an action, in some unanswerable or irresistible way; establish firmly.

Nautical, to calk slightly with oakum, in anticipation of foul weather.

To gripe.

To seize or gripe another, or one another, with a firm grasp or hold, as in wrestling: as, the men clenched.

To pun.

n. A catch; a grip; a persistent clutch.

n. That which holds fast or clenches; a clencher (or clincher); a holdfast.

n. Nautical, a mode of fastening large ropes, consisting of a half-hitch with the end stopped back to its part by seizings. The outer end of a hawser is bent by a clench to the ring of the anchor.

n. A pun or play on words.

n. A mode of securing a nail, staple, or the like, by turning over the point and hammering back into the wood the portion bent over.

v. hold in a tight grasp

n. a small slip noose made with seizing

n. the act of grasping

v. squeeze together tightly

"Yet DOE's culture has been created around this idea that if you ever fail, you get your butt dragged up to Congress and shouted at, and that just causes everybody to kind of clench up."

unclench   

clenched    clenches    clenching   

seize    clutch    prehend   

clinch    seize    grasp    strengthen   

clinch   

clinch   

clasp    clutch   

Bench    French    Hench    bench    drench    entrench    french    hench    quench    rench   

contort    taut    shuttered    tight    constrict    tense    calloused    numb    sweaty    bony