the.com/clutch

means A device that engages and disengages power transmission between rotating shafts, especially the pedal-and-plate system that connects an engine to a manual gearbox; also, more loosely, to grip something tightly or a moment of decisive pressure.

from From Old Norse 'klyckja,' to clutch or clench, and related Germanic words for closing the hand into a fist — the sense was simply 'to grip hard.' The mechanical meaning is much younger: 19th-century engineers borrowed the everyday word because the device, well, grips one shaft to another. The 'clutch' as in a brood of eggs is a separate strand, a dialect variant of 'cletch' from 'cleck,' to hatch — same spelling, different nest entirely.