Does "clack" necessarily refer to sound?

Question

I have a question about the verb clack in the following paragraph taken from Sandkings by George R. R. Martin. In this paragraph, the protagonist, Simon Kress, is being shown a strange kind of creature by someone named Jala Wo.

“Note the colors, if you will,” Wo told him. She pointed to the creatures that swarmed over the nearest castle. One was scrabbling at the tank wall. Kress studied it. It still looked like an insect to his eyes. Barely as long as his fingernail, six-limbed, with six tiny eyes set all around its body. A wicked set of mandibles clacked visibly, while two long, fine antennae wove patterns in the air. Antennae, mandibles, eyes, and legs were sooty black, but the dominant color was the burnt orange of its armor plating.

What does he mean by "clacked visibly"? Clack is defined, for example, by Collins as

1. to make or cause to make a sound like that of two pieces of wood hitting each other.

There is some disagreement over on Spanish SE about the meaning of clack in this context. (See, for example, https://spanish.stackexchange.com/posts/comments/32165?noredirect=1.) There are those who feel that "clack" is always about sound, and the visibility mentioned here just adds another type of perception. But there are others who feel that the "clacking" in this case is purely visual.

Is it possible for "clacking" not to include sound in its meaning?

In other words, does the "visibly" knock out the "audibly" that is normally understood by the word clacking?

Answer 1

The verb clack from the French claquer has a first meaning (1a), in the OED, of:

To chatter, prate, talk loquaciously. Said of chattering birds and human beings. (OED).

But it is OED sense 4a which is the onomatopoeic one, referring to sound:

a. intr. To make a sound intermediate between a clap and a crack, as a hard substance, such as a piece of wood, does in striking a hard surface. to clack (more commonly to crack) a whip.

1530 J. Palsgrave Lesclarcissement 485/1 The myll gothe, for I here the clacke clacke..car je os le clacquet clacquer or clacqueter.

1570 P. Levens Manipulus Vocabulorum sig. Aii/2, To Clacke, clangitare.

1611 R. Cotgrave Dict. French & Eng. Tongues Claquer, to clacke, to clap, to clatter.

1717 Dict. Rusticum (ed. 2) at Capriole, He [sc. a horse] Clacks or makes a Noise with them [sc. hind-legs].

1847 Thackeray Vanity Fair (1848) viii. 67 Whip clacking on the shoulders.

1875 W. D. Howells Foregone Concl. 60 A woman clacking across the flags in her wooden heeled shoes.

To me this is an onomatopoeic word which entirely relates to sound and I have seen nothing which suggests its use in the absence of sound. Even so, I see no reason why clacking should not take place "visibly". I suppose a person could be seen "visibly shouting", though the "shouting" would be primarily audible to anyone in the immediate locality of it.

Answer 2

Yes, clack refers to a sound:

the short loud sound made when two hard objects hit each other:

• the clack of high heels on the floor
• the clack of her knitting needles

(OLD)

In the OP's sentence visible means:

• apparent; manifest; obvious:

(Dictionary.com)

Words can be used figuratively. To sum up, clack literally refers to a sound, visibly is used to emphasise the action.

Answer 3

I think there's a bit of ambiguity in the original work.

The definition of the verb "clack" generally requires sound a to be present. It can describe creating sound like striking objects together (without an obvious single source), or it can refer to the actual repeated striking of objects together to make a sound.

But I don't think it would be too great of a linguistic stretch to extend the meaning a little further to describe the striking together of objects in a way you'd expect to make a clacking sound, even if that sound wasn't actually apparent. For instance, you can easily imagine the clacking sound that should go with this video of a girl running a stick along a wooden fence, even though there's no sound. While I don't think "clack" would be my preferred verb to use about what she was doing (as is clear from my choice of "running along" above), I'd have no problem understanding somebody else using it that way (even to describe the silent video).

In the quoted passage, the objects that are "clacking visibly" are the mandibles of a tiny insect-like creature. The word "visibly" tells us that the mandibles striking together can be seen by the character that is observing the creature. What's not completely clear is if the mandibles are actually making an audible clacking sound.

Indeed, it's hard to imagine a very small insect making a noise loud enough to justify the word "clack" (which more often describes the sound of large things like industrial machinery or train wheels). Perhaps the sound isn't actually audible, but in the mind of the character who's looking closely at it, the mandibles striking together seem like they should make a clacking sound (if they were larger, or if the listener was close enough). The author's intention is not completely clear.

Answer 4

Language evolves. If communication is successful, language has served its purpose.

In the military, we used "clack" as a verb when referring to the handheld triggering device for M18 Claymore mines. This device was referred to as a "clacker" because of the sound it made when using it.

So a typical usage as a verb might be "Always clack it 3 or 4 times to make sure it goes off".