the.com/paper clip

means A short length of bent wire (or molded plastic) shaped to grip sheets of paper together by spring tension, no fasteners required.

from A 19th-century solution to a dull problem: people had tried pins, string, and straight pins to bind pages, all of which tore or rusted paper. Inventors across Europe and America patented various bent-wire designs in the late 1800s, but the familiar looping 'Gem' shape—the one that still defines the word—seems to have emerged without a single credited inventor or patent, simply spreading through use until it became the default. The word itself is nothing fancier than 'paper' plus 'clip,' from an old Germanic root meaning to grip or clasp tightly.