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Glite Dictionary
Indian club

Indian club

1 7.4
A wooden club shaped like a bottle used for arm and shoulder exercise
  • noun
  • /ˈɪndiən klʌb/
translation icon : club indio
  • During the fitness seminar, participants learned how to effectively use Indian clubs for their workouts.

Examples

  • But some of the old style Indian clubs were this long.

  • Many households had at least one pair of Indian clubs for a daily exercise routine.

  • Indian clubs were exercise weights that became extremely popular in America from the 1860s to the 1930s.

Surface Forms

Indian club singular
Indian clubs plural

Morphology

Indian + club

The phrase literally combines 'Indian' (pertaining to India) and 'club' (a heavy stick), so a B1 learner who knows those words would infer it is a type of club associated with India. However, the conventionalized, non-weapon sense as a bottle-shaped wooden exercise implement is a specialized, culture-specific use that is not fully predictable from the constituents, making the transparency partial.

Etymology

Indian club comes from a real wooden tool used in India, where wrestlers and soldiers swung a bottle-shaped club to 'exercise' and build arm strength. That's why today Indian club means the bottle-shaped wooden club used for 'exercise' and therapy.