Definitions and meaning of gam
gam
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
From Italian gamba (“leg”). Doublet of gamba, jamb, and gamb.
Noun
gam (plural gams)
- (slang) A person's leg, especially an attractive woman's leg.
- 2010, Home Swell Home: Designing Your Dream Pad →ISBN, page 19:
- Make the salesclerk blush by flashing some gam and asking him to mix a bucket in your flesh tone.
- 2012 September 10, Ariel Levy, "The Space In Between", in The New Yorker:
- The women's-liberation movement of the late sixties and the seventies – the so-called second wave of feminism – introduced Americans to the notion that their mothers and sisters and daughters ought not to be "objectified": that there was something wrong with reducing female people to boobs, gams, and beaver.
Etymology 2
Uncertain but surely formed within English; etymons may include game or gammon.
Noun
gam (plural gams)
- Collective noun used to refer to a group of whales, or rarely also of porpoises; a pod.
- 1862, Henry Theodore Cheever, The Whalemen's Adventures in the Southern Ocean, Darton & Hodge, page 116:
- Upon getting into a "gam" of whales, this boat, together with that of one of the mates, pulled for a single whale that was seen at a distance from the others, and succeeded in getting square up to their victim unperceived.
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- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:gam.
- (by extension) A social gathering of whalers (whaling ships).
- 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Harper and Brothers, chapter 53:
- But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word, Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it. Gam. NOUN—A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats’ crews, the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.
- 1916, Harry B. Turner, Nantucket's Early Telegraph Service, in the Proceedings of the Nantucket Historical Association, page 50:
- There is still that yearning for news from Nantucket that there was when the whale-ships stopped for a gam out in the far-distant Pacific Ocean […]
- 1997, Gillies Ross, Margaret Penny, This Distant and Unsurveyed Country →ISBN, page 14:
- If time was available, whaling prospects poor, and the weather gentle, a gam might last all day and include tea and dinner.
Translations
Verb
gam (third-person singular simple present gams, present participle gamming, simple past and past participle gammed)
- (nautical, transitive, intransitive) To pay a social visit on another ship at sea.
- (US, dialect) To engage in social intercourse anywhere.
References
Anagrams
- AGM, GMA, MAG, MGA, Mag., mag
Acehnese
Noun
gam
- boy
References
- 2007. The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Department of Linguistics.
Bandjalang
Noun
gam
- (Wahlubal) hair of the head
Synonyms
Catalan
Etymology
From gamar-se.
Noun
gam m (plural gams)
- A wasting diseases, particularly distomatosis.
- Synonym: gamadura
Further reading
- “gam” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
Garo
Noun
gam
- stuff
Hausa
Etymology
Borrowed from English gum.
Noun
gâm m
- glue, paste
Lashi
Pronunciation
Classifier
gam
- classifier for a long, green plant, like a tree, grass or a flower
References
- Hkaw Luk, A grammatical sketch of Lacid[1], Chiang Mai: Payap University (master thesis), 2017
Middle English
Noun
gam
- Alternative form of game
Old Irish
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Proto-Celtic *gyemos.
Noun
gam (gender unknown)
- winter, winter storm
Derived terms
Mutation
Further reading
- “gaim”, in Gregory Toner, Maire Ní Mhaonaigh, Sharon Arbuthnot, Dagmar Wodtko, Maire-Luise Theuerkauf, editors, eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language, 2019
Scottish Gaelic
Etymology
Contraction of aig + mo (at my) or aig + am (at their)
Pronoun
gam
- me (direct object)
- A bheil thu gam chluinntinn? - Do you hear me?
- them (direct object)
- Cha robh i gam faicinn. - She didn't see them.
Usage notes
- As me lenites the following word.
- As them used before words beginning with b, f, m or p; otherwise gan is used.
- Although this can be thought of as filling the function of a direct object pronoun, it is actually a form of possessive, and can therefore only be used in a periphrastic tense formed with a verbal noun, never as the object of a finite verb. Tha e gam chluinntinn is literally "he is at the hearing of me", whereby gam represents "at ... of me". With a finite verb, the genuine object pronouns would be used: Chluinn e mi he heard me, chluinn e iad, he heard them.
Related terms
- ga
- gad
- gan
- gar
- gur
- iad
- mi
Swedish
Noun
gam c
- a vulture or condor; scavenging birds living in Africa, Europe, Asia and America
- (colloquial) someone who takes advantage of a demise or a bankruptcy, usually in a legal, but, for the affected people, offensive way
- Innan konkurshandlingarna ens var undertecknade samlades gamarna i verkstaden för att se vad som var värt att sälja vidare
Declension
Ternate
Pronunciation
Noun
gam
- village
References
- Rika Hayami-Allen, A descriptive study of the language of Ternate, the northern Moluccas, Indonesia, University of Pittsburgh, 2001, page 29
Turkish
Etymology
From Persian غم (ğam).
Noun
gam (definite accusative gamı, plural gamlar)
- sorrow
See also
Vietnamese
Etymology
Borrowed from French gramme.
Pronunciation
- (Hà Nội) IPA(key): [ɣaːm˧˧]
- (Huế) IPA(key): [ɣaːm˧˧]
- (Hồ Chí Minh City) IPA(key): [ɣaːm˧˧]
Noun
gam
- gram (unit of mass)
Volapük
Noun
gam (nominative plural gams)
- bride, groom
Declension
Derived terms
Zazaki
Noun
gam
- step
Source: wiktionary.org- to visit socially between whaling ships.
(source: Collins Scrabble Dictionary)