Ham Meaning
/ˈhæm/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounThe region back of the knee joint; the popliteal space; the hock.
nounA thigh and/or buttock of a hog slaughtered for meat; (occasionally) the corresponding cut from some other animal.
Sentence Examples
Some children brought peanut butter sandwiches, some ham, and others cheese.
Would you slice me a piece of ham, please?
CEFR Practice Quiz
For breakfast, he ate a slice of ____ from the pig's leg.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The actor was known to be a bit of a ____ who loved to overact and draw as much attention to himself as possible.
Word Origin & History
Inherited from Middle English hamme, from Old English hamm (“inner or hind part of the knee, ham”), from Proto-West Germanic *hammu, from Proto-Germanic *hamō, *hammō, *hanmō, from Proto-Indo-European *kónh₂m (“leg”). Cognate with Dutch ham (“ham”), dialectal German Hamme (“hind part of the knee, ham”), dialectal Swedish ham (“the hind part of the knee”), Icelandic höm (“the ham or haunch of a horse”), Old Irish cnáim (“bone”), Ancient Greek κνήμη (knḗmē, “shinbone”). Compare gammon and gam.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
""I'll have you so your hams will stand out like horse's shanks!" de declared."
— 1931, Ion L. Idriess, Lasseter's Last Ride, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 165:
"She put some ham in the beans and cut up some sweet potatoes to boil."
— 2012, Audra Lilly Griffeth, A King's Daughter, →ISBN:
"Writing in The New Yorker in 2005, James Wood praised Mr. McCarthy as “a colossally gifted writer” and “one of the great hams of American prose, who delights in producing a histrionic rhetoric that brilliantly ventriloquizes the King James Bible, Shakespearean and Jacobean tragedy, Melville, Conrad, and Faulkner.”"
— 2023 June 13, Dwight Garner, quoting James Wood, “Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
For breakfast, he ate a slice of ____ from the pig's leg.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The actor was known to be a bit of a ____ who loved to overact and draw as much attention to himself as possible.