And the clutch?

Until I did this on Friday, I thought the ‘D’ in ‘double-dee clutching’ (as I heard it – I had never seen it written down) was just the letter D, standing for some arcane bit of the clutch mechanism. Because of my new-found knowledge, I now come to realise that pressing the clutch pedal is actually de-clutching, ie, making the two discs of the clutch mechanism pull away from each other to allow the free spin of the gearbox. Tell me if I’m wrong. However, if this is the case, whoever called the clutch pedal the clutch, when they meant the de-clutcher, was sewing the seeds of confusion, if you ask me.