¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Claptraps
1. claptrap [n] - See also: claptrap
Lexicographical Neighbors of Claptraps
Literary usage of Claptraps
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country (1849)
"At all events, they did not go beyond those ordinary claptraps of so- called
liberty, which consisted in tirades of some hundred lines against ' tyrants,' ..."
2. The Spaniard; or, Relvindez and Elzora, a tragedy, and The young country by Simon Gray, Hugh Blair (1839)
"Their pieces, therefore, are what they have been constrained to make them, very
much copies of one another, and consisting chiefly of mere claptraps, ..."
3. The History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay (1907)
"... utterly destitute of literary merit, but valuable as showing what were then
the most successful claptraps for an audience composed of the common people. ..."
4. Works by Manuel Márquez Sterling, William Makepeace Thackeray, Leslie Stephen, Louise Stanage (1902)
"... claptraps ; a silly mummery of dividing and debating, which does not in the
least, however it may turn, affect his condition. ..."
5. Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795-1835 by James Anthony Froude (1882)
"All must be packed up into epigrammatic contrasts, startling exaggerations,
claptraps that will get a plaudit from the galleries ! ..."
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