Oh my word Claque, Clique, Calque

A photo-journalist will always aim to click a photograph of a clique at planned or unplanned gathering of politicians and businessmen.

You might have clicked photographs, you might have made clicking sounds while interacting with a clique or claque…

“When an influential clique of business people gathered for a champagne lunch at Aspinalls a few days ago, there was only one thing on their minds. The buzz at the private elite gambling club in Mayfair was not about roulette or poker, but another type of gambling: who to back as the next leader of the Conservative Party.” –Melissa Kite, Evening Standard 1 August 2011.

Clique (pronounced as klik, cliques is a plural noun) means a closely-knit group of people. They meet regularly to discuss their interests and aspirations; coteries, set, ring and a circle of someone. This exclusive set of individuals is different from the crowd.

Derivatives of clique are cliqued, cliquing (verbs), cliquey, cliquey, cliquish, clique-less (adjectives), cliquishly (adverb), cliquism, sub-clique (nouns).

A clique of three businessmen (Gurucharan Singh, Chandan Bhatia, Sanjay Aggarwal and others made rickshaw-pullers and hawkers as directors of fake companies and in Delhi, and in connivance with the Bank of Baroda’s Ashok Vihar branch’s S K Garg and Jainish Dubey had transferred blackmoney or unaccounted/untaxed money to accounts in Hong Kong. The scam was unearthed by CBI, Government of India in November 2015.

Claque (pronounced as klak) literally means to clap. Claque means a set of hired people in order to make them to do something (such as cry, tickle, laugh, deride) and thus to effect an influence on the audience. This group of people could even be sycophants.

In France hiring claque at artistic performances was in vogue, possibly defunct now or in practice at political and corporate gatherings.

Can a clique become claque?

“Over the years, Mr. Mukherjee has acquired a considerable claque,” wrote Harish Khare on the eve of the swearing-in ceremony of the President-elect Pranabh Mukherjee in The Hindu on July 25, 2012. “…The claque can become a clique and easily goad him into the Zail Singh corner.”

The hired (claque) could people could be criers, laughers, ticklers and deriders to execute their performance in accordance to the expectations of their hirer.

Clique and claque are French in origin

Calque (singular noun), calques (plural noun) is a word or phrase derived from another language either word for word or morpheme-by-morpheme. Claque is adopting a word from one language to another.

For example watershed in English is wasserscheide in German.

The variants of calque are calques, calquing, calqued.

Kovuuri G Reddy