Simple past tense or past participle of 'clap'; to strike palms together to make noise, or to place or put quickly.
From Old English 'clæpan' (to throb, to beat) or possibly imitative origin. 'Clapt' represents the older past tense form before 'clapped' became standard, still appearing in poetic or dialectal speech.
The survival of 'clapt' alongside 'clapped' in some dialects shows how irregular verb forms persist in conservative speech communities—it's a linguistic fossil showing how English transformed over centuries.
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