clamp down

English

Verb

clamp down on (third-person singular simple present clamps down on, present participle clamping down on, simple past and past participle clamped down on)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To take measures to stop (something); to put an end to (something); to exert tighter control of (something); to treat (someone or something) more harshly.

   Coordinate terms: crack down (harsher), put a damper on (milder)

   The government aims to clamp down on underage drinking.

   • 2018 July 3, Phil McNulty, “Colombia 1 - 1 England”, in BBC Sport‎:

     American referee Mike Geiger's failure to clamp down on early misdemeanours led to him losing control of a game that Colombia seemed determined to turn into a battle.

   • 2023 March 15, Kevin Roose, “GPT-4 Is Exciting and Scary”, in The New York Times‎:

     A few chilling examples of what GPT-4 can do — or, more accurately, what it did do, before OpenAI clamped down on it — can be found in a document released by OpenAI this week.

Derived terms

• clampdown (noun)

Related terms

• clamp off

 

Translations

to take measures to stop something

Chinese: Mandarin: 壓制／压制 (zh) (yāzhì), 制止 (zh) (zhìzhǐ), 鎮壓／镇压 (zh) (zhènyā) Danish: slå ned på Finnish: puuttua (fi) French: lutter contre, faire cesser, mettre un terme (fr) Maori: pēhipēhi Northern Sami: loahpahit, loaktit Portuguese: please add this translation if you can Russian: покончить (ru) (pokončitʹ) Spanish: please add this translation if you can Swedish: sätta stopp för (sv)