Word.ws English Dictionary

ream

/ɹiːm/

ream noun: cream; also, the creamlike froth on ale or other liquor; froth or foam in general.

Noun (1)

ream

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) Cream; also, the creamlike froth on ale or other liquor; froth or foam in general.

Verb (1)

ream (third-person singular simple present reams, present participle reaming, simple past and past participle reamed)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) To cream; mantle; foam; froth.
    • a huge pewter measuring pot […] which, in the language of the hostess, reamed with excellent claret1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London...

Verb (2)

ream (third-person singular simple present reams, present participle reaming, simple past and past participle reamed)

  1. (transitive) To enlarge (a hole), especially using a reamer; to bore (a hole) wider.
    Synonyms:
    rime
  2. (transitive) To remove (material) by reaming.
  3. (transitive) To remove burrs and debris from inside (something, such as a freshly bored hole) using a tool.
    Synonyms:
    rime
  4. To shape or form, especially using a reamer.
  5. (broadly, slang, vulgar) To sexually penetrate in a rough and painful way.
    Synonyms:
    dig out
  6. (slang) To yell at or berate.
    Synonyms:
    ream out

Noun (2)

ream (plural reams)

  1. (broadly, figuratively, in plural) An extremely large quantity of documents, data, or information that supports a claim, investigation, or case.
    • The accountants requested reams of financial records.
  2. (broadly, in plural) An abstract large amount of something.
    • I can't go – I still have reams of work left.
    • A large language model (LLM), the technology underpinning chatbots like ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, is a type of neural network, a computer program different from typical software. By feeding it reams of data, engineers train the models to spot patterns and predict what “tokens,” or fragments of...2025 December 11, Charlie Campbell, Andrew R. Chow, Billy Perrigo, “The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year”, in Time

Proper noun capitalized: Ream

Ream

  1. A surname.

ream meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Tagalog

ream in Tamil

தாள் எண்ணலகு, அகலஞ்செய்தல்

ream in Urdu

جھاگ, پھین, ردہ, جھاگ اٹھنا, جھاگ نکالنا, پھین بنانا

ream in Malayalam

പാളി കടലാസ്സ്, കടലാസ്സുകെട്ട്, ഇരുപതു ക്വയർ കടലാസ്

ream in Tagalog

bundle of paper
resma
More languagesFewer languages
ream in Indonesian
rim
ream in Thai
รีม riim

Examples of ream in a sentence

  • Toss me a ream of that plain paper, please. The printer is empty again.
  • What if the fellow cleaned his teeth and reamed his nails and wore side-lever whiskers?
  • She's probably in her cabin writing reams about me to a fellow-flapper at this very moment.

All 15 example sentences with ream

Synonyms of ream

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of ream

Forms of ream

Noun
alternative formreem
alternative formraim
pluralreams
alternative formreme
Verb
third-person singular presentreams
present participlereaming
past participlereamed
pastreamed
alternative formrim

Past tense of ream: reamed

Origin of ream

From Middle English rem, reme, from Old English rēam (“cream”), from Proto-West Germanic *raum, from Proto-Germanic *raumaz (“cream”), from Proto-Indo-European *réwgʰmn̥ (“to sour [milk]”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Room (“cream”), West Frisian rjemme (“cream”), Dutch room (“cream”), German Low German Rahm, Rohm (“cream”), German Rahm (“cream”), Swedish römme (“cream”), Norwegian rømme (“sour cream”), Faroese rómi (“cream”), Icelandic rjómi (“cream”). See also ramekin.

Etymology uncertain, possibly a variant of rime (etymology 4) with the East Anglian and Kentish development of Old English /yː/ to /eː/ (the modern spelling would thus be unetymologically for *reem). Doublet of room. Cognates * Dutch ruimen (“to empty, evacuate”) * German räumen (“to make room”) * Icelandic rýma (“to make room, clear”).

From Middle English reme, from Old French raime, rayme (“ream”) (French rame), from Catalan raima (“ream”), from Arabic رِزْمَة (rizma, “bundle”).

Words formed from ream

Phrases with ream

Words that rhyme with ream

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ream

What does ream mean?
Ream means cream; also, the creamlike froth on ale or other liquor; froth or foam in general.
What is ream in Tamil?
Ream in Tamil is தாள் எண்ணலகு, அகலஞ்செய்தல். See Ream meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ream?
Ream can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ream?
Ream is pronounced /ɹiːm/.
What is the plural of ream?
The plural of ream is reams.

Words near ream in the dictionary

  1. realtor
  2. realtors
  3. realty
  4. realveolarization
  5. realy
  6. ream
  7. ream job
  8. ream jobs
  9. ream out
  10. reamage
  11. reamages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ream (page history and authors); Ream (page history and authors); ream (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ream (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ream (Malayalam Wiktionary) (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: En-au-ream.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-ream.wav.

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