Both are true, but usually that means the latter. Clojure was designed to make it as easy as possible to rub a little bit of parens on an existing (JVM, though

Both are true, but usually that means the latter. Clojure was designed to make it as easy as possible to rub a little bit of parens on an existing (JVM, though now also other platforms) project. That means being a hosted language that embraces interop very closely, and shipping the language as just a jar.