Gam

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -æm

Variant form of gamb. From Old Provencal gamba ("leg").

Full definition of gam

Noun

1. (slang) A person's leg.
• 2012, Ariel Levy, "The Space In Between", The New Yorker, 10 Sep 2012: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.

Noun

1. A collective noun used to refer to a group of whales; 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.
2. (by extension) A social gathering of whalers or other 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.

Verb

1. (nautical) To make a social visit on another ship at sea.

From the Irish gámaí meaning "booby", "dolt".

Noun

1. (Ireland) Alternative spelling of gom A silly, foolish person.

Anagrams

• AGM
• gma
• mag