ham

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
When buying ham, read the label carefully to determine whether the ham is the cook-before-eating variety or fully cooked.

View all »
Definitions (26)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (9)

  1. noun The thigh of the hind leg of certain animals, especially a hog.
  2. noun A cut of meat from the thigh of a hog.
  3. noun The back of the knee.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (7)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (5)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (5)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • I hope Burn-ham is an LRB subscriber, because this may well be the most erotically charged thing anyone ever writes about him. —  Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk
  • When buying ham, read the label carefully to determine whether the ham is the cook-before-eating variety or fully cooked. —  The Seattle Times
  • The haversacks of the soldiers had been filled with crackers and cold ham, and they had a jolly dinner in a grove where they stopped About four o'clock in the afternoon, they reached the upper end of the lake, and the orders necessary for forming a camp were given. —  In School and Out or, The Conquest of Richard Grant.
  • It was a conflagration of celestial rose upon the saddest purples and cavernous recesses of intensest azure We had an excellent supper in the visitor's refectory--soup, good bread and country wine, ham, a roast chicken with potatoes, a nice white cheese made of sheep's milk, and grapes for dessert. —  New Italian sketches
  • She worked sucking one finger after another and poking her pencil into her ears One pound, three shillings--ham, ham, ham At one moment she invited the cook to assist her, and that lady, crimson from the kitchen fire, bared arms akimbo, stated that she was not only the most economical woman in London, but was also, thanks to her upbringing, one of the most sober and virtuous, and if Miss Cardinal had anything to say against Oh no! —  The Captives
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 277 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English hamme, from Old English hamm. N., senses 6 and 7, possibly from ham-fatter, a poor or amateurish actor.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English hamme, homme, from Anglo-Saxon hamm = Dutch ham = Middle Low German ham, hamme = Old High German hamma, Middle High German hamme, German dial. hamme, the ham, = Icelandic höm, the ham or haunch of a horse, = Swedish dial. ham, the hind part of the knee; prob. literally the ‘crook’ or ‘bend’ of the leg (cf. Old French F. jambe = Spanish Portuguese Italian gamba, Middle Latin gamba, leg (see gamb, jamb), ult. of Celtic origin); cf. W. Irish Gaelic cam, crooked, Latin camur, crooked; Latin camera, camara, from Greek καμάρα, a vault, chamber, etc.: see cam, camera, camber, chamber, etc.
  2. from Middle English ham, hamme (in comp. names), from Anglo-Saxon ham (hamm-), an inclosure, fold, dwelling, chiefly in comp., in local names, in which it became confused with ham, similarly used (see ham, 2). Cf. hem, hemble.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/hæm/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about twice a week.

Recently looked up

equi · tell · contain · Mercurius · pepsi

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

introduce it to Gladstone · Kylee · ultimatum · pew · deadpool