Word.ws English Dictionary

-ham

/əm/US/ˌhæm/

-ham suffix: place-name suffix, variously indicating a settlement, farm or enclosure.

Suffix

-ham

  1. Place-name suffix, variously indicating a settlement, farm or enclosure.

Origin of -ham

From the convergence of two elements: * Middle English -ham, -hame, from Old English hām (“home, farm, estate”), from Proto-West Germanic *haim. Cognate with German -heim and Dutch -hem, and doublet of home. * Middle English -hamme, from Old English hamm (“enclosure”, often specifically “land enclosed by a river”), from the root of Proto-West Germanic *hammjan (“to pinch, to hem, to enclose”).

Questions about -ham

What does -ham mean?
-ham means place-name suffix, variously indicating a settlement, farm or enclosure.
What part of speech is -ham?
-ham is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -ham?
-ham is pronounced /əm/ (UK).

Words near -ham in the dictionary

  1. -gynous
  2. -gyny
  3. -gyre
  4. -h
  5. -h-
  6. -ham
  7. -head
  8. -heads
  9. -hedra
  10. -hedral
  11. -hedron

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -ham (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q7979-Soundguys--ham.wav.

Cite this entry: “-ham.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ham. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.