Word + Quiz: clapper

clapper \ˈkla-pər \ noun

1. metal striker that hangs inside a bell and makes a sound by hitting the side

2. someone who applauds

3. a mobile mass of muscular tissue covered with mucous membrane and located in the oral cavity

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The word clapper has appeared in 92 articles on nytimes.com in the past year, including on Jan. 4 in the book review “Shorthand for Suffering: Siberia Under the Czars” by Steven Lee Myers:

“The House of the Dead” opens with a Gogolian story about a church bell from Uglich, one of the ancient towns dotted along the Volga River. In 1591, residents rang the bell in alarm after the heir of Ivan the Terrible, then 9, was found with his throat slit.

Boris Godunov, the regent suspected by some of complicity, crushed the incipient rebellion by ordering the execution of 200 people who answered the bell’s peals and the banishment of the rest. With a symbolic flourish, he ordered the bell into Siberian exile with them, removing its clapper to silence it.

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