“The clap” is a slang term for gonorrhea, one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in the world. It’s caused by bacteria that infect the genitals, rectum, or throat, and it often produces no symptoms at all, which makes it easy to spread without knowing. In the United States alone, over 543,000 cases were reported in 2024.
Why Is It Called “the Clap”?
Nobody knows for sure where the nickname came from, but there are three popular theories. One is that it refers to the burning, “clapping” sensation people feel during urination when infected. Another points to an old (and painful) folk treatment: clapping an infected penis between two hands or a heavy book to squeeze out pus. The third theory traces the word to French brothels called “les clapiers,” which translates roughly to “rabbit huts,” small rooms where sex workers lived and where the infection spread easily.
How Gonorrhea Spreads
Gonorrhea passes from person to person through vaginal, oral, or anal sex. A pregnant mother can also pass it to her baby during delivery. The bacteria can infect the urethra, cervix, rectum, throat, and even the eyes. Because many carriers have no symptoms, people frequently transmit the infection without realizing they have it.
After exposure, symptoms typically appear within 1 to 14 days, though many people never develop noticeable signs at all.
Symptoms in Men
Men are more likely than women to notice something is wrong. The most common signs include a burning sensation when urinating and a white, yellow, or green discharge from the penis. Less commonly, the testicles may become painful or swollen. Some men, however, remain completely asymptomatic and can spread the bacteria unknowingly.
Symptoms in Women
Most women with gonorrhea have no symptoms, which is one of the main reasons the infection goes undiagnosed and untreated. When symptoms do appear, they can include painful or burning urination, increased vaginal discharge, and vaginal bleeding between periods. These signs are easy to mistake for a urinary tract infection or a normal fluctuation in discharge, so many women don’t seek testing.
Rectal and Throat Infections
Gonorrhea in the rectum may cause discharge, anal itching, soreness, bleeding, or painful bowel movements. It can also cause no symptoms at all. Throat infections from oral sex are usually silent too, occasionally producing a sore throat that’s easily dismissed. Because these infections rarely announce themselves, testing is the only reliable way to catch them.
How It’s Diagnosed
The standard test for gonorrhea is a nucleic acid amplification test, which detects the bacteria’s genetic material from a urine sample or a swab of the infected site (throat, cervix, or rectum). These tests are the most sensitive available and can pick up even small amounts of the bacteria. Unlike some other STI tests, you don’t necessarily need to wait days after exposure before testing, though retesting later is still recommended if your initial result is negative but your risk was high.
What Happens If It Goes Untreated
Left alone, gonorrhea doesn’t just linger. It climbs. In women, the bacteria can travel from the cervix into the uterus and fallopian tubes, causing pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). An estimated 10% to 20% of untreated gonorrheal infections in women progress to PID. The inflammation damages and scars the reproductive organs, which can lead to chronic pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy, and infertility. Delayed treatment significantly worsens fertility outcomes, and some of the damage is irreversible once scarring has formed.
In men, untreated gonorrhea can cause a painful infection in the tubes connected to the testicles, which can also affect fertility in rare cases. In both sexes, the bacteria can occasionally enter the bloodstream and spread to joints and other organs, a serious condition that requires hospitalization.
Treatment
Gonorrhea is curable with antibiotics. The current recommended treatment is a single injection, typically given in a doctor’s office or clinic. For most people, that one visit is all it takes to clear the infection. You should avoid sexual contact for seven days after treatment to prevent passing the bacteria to a partner.
Three months after treatment, you should get retested. This isn’t to check whether the antibiotics worked (they almost always do) but to catch any new infection you may have picked up in the meantime. Reinfection is common, especially if a sexual partner wasn’t treated simultaneously.
Why Antibiotic Resistance Matters
Gonorrhea has a long track record of outsmarting antibiotics. The bacteria have developed resistance to nearly every drug ever used against them, and the problem is accelerating. Between 2022 and 2024, resistance to the primary antibiotic used to treat gonorrhea rose from 0.8% to 5% globally. Resistance to an older oral antibiotic in the same drug class jumped from 1.7% to 11%. An older class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones is now essentially useless, with 95% resistance worldwide.
For now, the standard injection still works for the vast majority of cases. But the World Health Organization has warned that resistant strains are being detected in more countries every year. This is one reason why getting tested and treated promptly matters: the fewer bacteria circulating, the fewer opportunities resistance has to develop and spread.
How to Reduce Your Risk
Condoms used consistently and correctly during vaginal, anal, and oral sex significantly lower the chance of transmission. If you have multiple partners or a new partner, regular screening is the most practical safeguard, especially since gonorrhea so often produces no symptoms. Many sexual health clinics offer testing for gonorrhea alongside chlamydia and syphilis in a single visit. If you test positive, your recent sexual partners need to be notified and tested too, because treating only one person in a partnership leads to reinfection.