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gam

noun
/ɡæm/

Etymology

From Italian gamba (“leg”). Doublet of gamb, gamba, jamb, and jambe. Compare gammon and ham.

  1. borrowed from gamba

Definitions

  1. A person's leg, especially an attractive woman's leg.

    • Make the salesclerk blush by flashing some gam and asking him to mix a bucket in your flesh tone.

  2. Collective noun used to refer to a group of whales, or rarely also of porpoises

    Collective noun used to refer to a group of whales, or rarely also of porpoises; a pod.

    • 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.
    • Breakfast was interrupted as a gam of porpoises surrounded the Argyle, swaying in the foam and singing in gurgles and beeps.
    • Christmas day in 1998, we lived on the Pacific Ocean in Pacific Grove, California and watched a gam of whales breaching in the deep ultramarine water.

  3. A social gathering of whalers (whaling ships).

    • 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 […]
    • If time was available, whaling prospects poor, and the weather gentle, a gam might last all day and include tea and dinner.
  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. To pay a social visit on another ship at sea.

      • Although most whalemen looked forward to gamming and enjoyed these ocean-borne gatherings, there were at least a few whalemen who either grew weary of them, or just weary of gamming so often with the same ships over and over.
      • This was early in the summer of 1820, after nearly a year at sea, and they had gammed the whaling ship Aurora, which had on board not only plenty of letters but some newspapers as well.
      • In chapter 2 we saw how gamming whalers sang songs that tied them to their homelands while emphasizing the transient, cosmopolitan nature of their work, […]

    2. To engage in social intercourse anywhere.

    3. Abbreviation of gynandromorph.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for gam. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA