Clinch

To bend the point of a nail after it is driven home. The word is sometimes written clench, from the French clenche, the lift of a latch. (German, klinke; Dutch, klinken, to rivet.) (See page 261, col. 1, Clench.)

That was a clincher. That argument was not to be gainsaid; that remark drove the matter home, and fixed it “as a nail in a sure place.”

A lie is called a clincher from the tale about two swaggerers, one of whom said, “I drove a nail right through the moon.” “Yes,” said the other, “I remember it well, for I went the other side and clinched it.” The French say, Je lui ai bien rivé son clou (I have clinched his nail for him).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.