Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A barrier constructed across a waterway to control the flow or raise the level of water.
- n. A body of water controlled by such a barrier.
- n. A barrier against the passage of liquid or loose material, as a rubber sheet used in dentistry to isolate one or more teeth from the rest of the mouth.
- n. An obstruction; a hindrance.
- v. To hold back or confine by means of a dam.
- v. To close up; obstruct: He tried to dam his grief. See Synonyms at hinder1.
- n. A female parent. Used of a four-legged animal.
- n. Archaic A mother.
- abbr. decameter.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A mole, bank, or mound of earth, or a wall, or a frame of wood, constructed across a stream of water to obstruct its flow and thus raise its level, in order to make it available as a motive power, as for driving a mill-wheel; such an obstruction built for any purpose, as to form a reservoir, to protect a tract of land from overflow, etc.; in law, an artificial boundary or means of confinement of running water, or of water which would otherwise flow away.
- n. In mining, any underground wall or stopping, constructed of masonry, clay, or timber, for the purpose of holding back water, air, or gas.
- n. In dentistry, a guard of soft rubber placed round a tooth to keep it free from saliva while being prepared for filling.
- n. The body of water confined by a dam.
- To obstruct or restrain the flow of by a dam; confine or raise the level of by constructing a dam, as a stream of water: often with in, up.
- To confine or restrain as if with a dam; stop or shut up or in; obstruct: with up.
- n. A female parent: used of beasts, particularly of quadrupeds, and sometimes (now usually in a slighting sense) of women.
- n. A crowned man in the game of draughts or checkers.
- n. A fire-brick wall forming the front of the hearth or crucible of a blast-furnace, through which the tap-hole is formed.
Wiktionary
- n. Structure placed across a flowing body of water to stop the flow.
- n. A device to prevent a tooth from getting wet, consisting of a rubber sheet held with a band.
- n. Mother, generally regarding breeding of animals (compare sire).
- n. stable
- n. roof
- n. taste
- v. To block the flow of water.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A female parent; -- used of beasts, especially of quadrupeds; sometimes applied in contempt to a human mother.
- n. A king or crowned piece in the game of draughts.
- n. A barrier to prevent the flow of a liquid; esp., a bank of earth, or wall of any kind, as of masonry or wood, built across a water course, to confine and keep back flowing water.
- n. A firebrick wall, or a stone, which forms the front of the hearth of a blast furnace.
- v. To obstruct or restrain the flow of, by a dam; to confine by constructing a dam, as a stream of water; -- generally used with in or up.
- v. To shut up; to stop up; to close; to restrain.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a barrier constructed to contain the flow of water or to keep out the sea
- v. obstruct with, or as if with, a dam
- n. a metric unit of length equal to ten meters
- n. female parent of an animal especially domestic livestock
Etymologies
- Middle English.Middle English dam, dame, lady, mother; see dame.
Examples
“Completed in 1991, the dam is a joint effort of of the governments of Brazil and Paraguay.”
“Apparently, the dam is already under a lot of stress because of all the silt that the river carries that it used to dump on the floodplain.”
“And so in China, the army starts displacing villagers to begin what it calls a dam-building project.”
“Two large canals extend along the other two sides of the city up to the vertex, where they join and meet a river called the Rotte, which name, prefixed to the word dam, meaning dyke, gives Rotterdam.”
“Its swift and dangerous when the dam is producing electricty.”
“Tie on 1/0 bait hook with canned corn, a slip sinker setup, and toss it out below a Wisconsin dam on a warm Sept. morning and hang on tight!”
“Massive curtain dam gathers steam Written by GR Staff Saturday, 21 March 2009”
“Without repair the dam is in danger of failure, a multi million dollar erosion catastrophe.”
“In Congress Republicans are capitulating on financial reform, and they will find it increasingly hard to do anything but hold up nominees, now that the dam is broken their future party unity is in doubt.”
Think Progress » Krauthammer Contradicts Bolton’s Iran Warmongering: An Attack ‘May Be Ineffective’
“I am a fearful man - most fearful - but I tell you I have been in dam'-tight places more than hairs on my head.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dam’.
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bbc uk china vocab.
conservationists, estimate, threats, infertility, eating away at, endangered, furry, panel, in trouble, gongs, triumphed, caps and 563 more...
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 280 more...
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Open List: Sheepishness
Everything sheep, from Artiodactyla to zodiac.
lanolin, ram, ewe, Artiodactyla, even-toed ungulate, ruminant, Ovis aries, ovine, domestic, domesticated, neotenic, mouflon and 390 more...
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3 Letter Words
A list of English words that are three letters long.
ace, act, ade, ado, add, ads, age, ago, ail, air, aim, all and 397 more...
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Dam
List of words pertaining to dams and other means of impounding and directing water; their names, parts, pieces, passageways.
gage-weir, rafter-dam, bear-trap dam, tripsill, splash-dam, flood-dam, flooding-dam, sluiceway, spillway, millrace, headrace, sluice-valve and 34 more...
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saddlechariot's list
words used to distort science and create a racialist environment.
prepotency, blood, breeding, pure, thoroughbred, breed, pedigree, sire, dam, saddlechariot

Prolagus You can't argue with a river, it is going to flow. You can dam it up, put it to useful purposes, deflect it, but you can't argue with it.
(Dean Gooderham Acheson) Aug 5, 2008
oroboros Mad in reverse. Nov 2, 2007