ham

Study(19)

UK /ˈhæm/ US /ˈhæːm/

noun 9name 7verb 1adv 1

Collocations

(noun.)

ADJ

lean | baked, boiled, cooked, cured, honey-roast, Parma, smoked

cold

My mum made sandwiches with cold ham, cheese, and tomatoes for our picnic lunch.

sliced

QUANT

bit, piece, slice | joint, leg

VERB + HAM

eat, have | boil, cook, roast | carve, slice

HAM + NOUN

roll, salad, sandwich

PHRASES

ham on the bone

She bought a slice of ham on the bone from the butcher for Sunday lunch.

Definitions

noun

The region back of the knee joint; the popliteal space; the hock.

A thigh and/or buttock of a hog slaughtered for meat; (occasionally) the corresponding cut from some other animal.

"I'll have you so your hams will stand out like horse's shanks!" de declared.

Meat from the thigh and/or buttock of a hog cured for food.

a little piece of ham for the cat

She put some ham in the beans and cut up some sweet potatoes to boil.

The back of the thigh of humans or certain other animals.

Electronic mail that is wanted; email that is not spam or junk mail.

noun

Obsolete form of home.

noun

An overacting or amateurish performer; an actor with an especially showy or exaggerated style.

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.”

An amateur radio operator.

Thesaurus

Synonyms

noun — meat cut from the thigh of a hog (usually smoked)

jambon
gammon

verb — exaggerate one's acting

Antonyms

underact
underplay

Idioms & Phrases

ham it up

To deliberately exaggerate one's emotions or movements, or to overact or act hammily.

Near-synonym: camp it up

if we had some ham we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs

Alternative form of if we had ham we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.

In some minds, optical computing was "wishful thinking on the order of: if we had some ham we could have some ham and eggs—if we had some eggs."

if we had ham we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs

Draws attention to the futility of a plan or strategy in the absence of the resources necessary for it to work.

The situation reminds me of the statement that "if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs — if we had eggs" — but in a world in which there are no hens. In theory, truly secure sys

indict a ham sandwich

Of a grand jury: to charge a person with a crime, despite a perceived lack of evidence.

Advocates of the grand jury say it is the only shield in the criminal justice system between police and prosecutors and the accused. […] But critics say the grand jury doesn't shie

Example Bank

"I'll have you so your hams will stand out like horse's shanks!" de declared.

Wiktionary

a little piece of ham for the cat

Wiktionary

She put some ham in the beans and cut up some sweet potatoes to boil.

Wiktionary

Near-synonym: camp it up

Wiktionary

Some children brought peanut butter sandwiches, some ham, and others cheese.

Tatoeba · #24526

Usage Notes

i Register

In some senses, ham is marked as informal, obsolete. Watch for register when choosing this word.

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