: a narrow exclusive circle or group of persons
especially
: one held together by common interests, views, or purposes
high school cliques
cliquishly
adverb
cliquishness
noun
variants
or less commonly cliqueish
1
: tending toward narrow exclusiveness or to form a clique
cliquish attitudes developed among children coming from the fashionable west side
newly arrived immigrants tend to be cliquish for a while
2
: marked by a tendency to divide into cliques
ballet companies by reputation are … cliquish—Al Hine
cliquishly
adverb
Cliquishly removed from everyone else, these four misshapen heroes maintained their mutual connection through ironic code …
—Frazier Moore, Portsmouth (Ohio) Daily Times, 8 Oct. 2001
cliquishness
noun
There is a slight sense of Southern cliquishness—understandable, I suppose, in a Virginia magazine, and not so hard to take when it involves the likes of Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor and Peter Taylor.
—Daniel Stern, New York Times Book Review, 19 Jan. 1986
Cite this Entry
“Clique.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clique. Accessed 7 Jul. 2026.
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