clog [ME] The earliest meaning of clog was ‘a block of wood’, especially one fastened to the leg or neck of an animal to stop it moving too far. The term for a wooden-soled shoe is nearly as early and probably first referred to the thick wooden sole alone. The verb was first used to mean ‘to hamper something by attaching a clog’ [LME], and from this developed the idea of hindering free passage through something by blocking it [L16th]. Clogs were formerly worn by factory and manual workers in the north of England. From clogs to clogs in three generations is said to be a late 19th-century Lancashire proverb, meaning that it takes one generation to found a business, the next to build it, and the third to spend the profits, leaving the family penniless again.