'am

Noun (1)

ham (countable and uncountable, plural hams)

1. The region back of the knee joint; the popliteal space; the hock.
2. (countable) 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.1931, Ion L. Idriess, Lasseter's Last Ride, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 165
3. (uncountable) Meat from the thigh and/or buttock of a hog cured for food.
   • a little piece of ham for the cat
4. The back of the thigh of humans or certain other animals.
5. (Internet, informal, uncommon) Electronic mail that is wanted; email that is not spam or junk mail.

   Synonyms:

   ham e-mail

   Antonyms:

   spam, junk mail

Noun (2)

ham (plural hams)

1. 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...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

   Synonyms:

   hambone, hamfatter, overactor, tear-cat

See all 17 meanings of ham