dam
A structure placed across a flowing body of water to stop the flow or part of the flow, generally for purposes such as retaining or diverting some of the water or retarding the release of accumulated water to avoid abrupt flooding.
Adjective
- Damn.
- Do not get too caught up in individual campism. The Most-High sent your spirits back on earth to fix yourselves, come together and wake up our people, so do your dam job and stop letting your fleshly desires control...
Origin
Pronunciation spelling of damn.
Forms
Interjection
- Damn.
Forms
Noun Entry 3
- A structure placed across a flowing body of water to stop the flow or part of the flow, generally for purposes such as retaining or diverting some of the water or retarding the release of accumulated water to avoid abrupt flooding.
- A dam is often an essential source of water to farmers of hilly country.
- Nothing could be more business-like than the construction of the stout dams, and nothing more gently rural than the limpid lakes, with the grand old forest trees marshalled round their margins[…] - 1913, Robert Barr,...
- Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources. Now the two great Asian powers, India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world's deepest...
- The water reservoir resulting from placing such a structure.
- Boats may only be used at places set aside for boating on the dam.
- A device to prevent a tooth from getting wet during dental work, consisting of a rubber sheet held with a band.
Synonyms: dental dam oral dam
- A reservoir.
- A firebrick wall, or a stone, which forms the front of the hearth of a blast furnace.
Origin
From Middle English dam, from Old English *damm, from Proto-West Germanic *damm, from Proto-Germanic *dammaz.
Forms
Derived
antidam bear-trap dam beaver dam Beaver Dam Broken Dam check dam coffer-dam coffer dam cofferdam dambreak dam break damburst dambuster dambusting dam failure damlike dammable dam plate damside damsire dental dam earthquake dam gravity dam hydroelectric dam
Noun Entry 4
- Female parent, mother, generally regarding breeding of animals.
- More dear […] than younglings to their dam. - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 52:
- The dam runs lowing up and down, / Looking the way her harmless young one went. - 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, &...
- Hunters assure us, that to chuse the best dog, and which they purpose to keepe from out a litter of other young whelps, there is no better meane than the damme herselfe[…]. - 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in...
- A kind of crowned piece in the game of draughts.
Origin
Variant of dame. Doublet of domina and donna.
Forms
Noun India, historical
- An obsolete Indian copper coin, equal to a fortieth of a rupee.
- […] A small Indian coin; whence comes the saying "I don't care a dam for you," that is I don't value you a farthing, and not as generally given, "I don't care a damn" or a "curse for you." [Possibly a folk etymology.] -...
- A former coin of Nepal, 128 of which were worth one mohar.
Origin
From Hindi दाम (dām), from Sauraseni Prakrit 𑀤𑀫𑁆𑀫 (damma, “coin”), from Sanskrit द्रम्म (drammá), from Ancient Greek δραχμή (drakhmḗ). Doublet of drachm, drachma, and dram. Alternatively said to be possibly coined from the English phrase "I don't give a dam(n)," referring to its small worth.
Forms
Verb
- To block the flow of water.
- Home I vvould go, / But that my Dores are hatefull to my eyes. / Fill'd and damm'd up vvith gaping Creditors, / VVatchfull as Fovvlers vvhen their Game vvill ſpring; […] - 1682, Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d, or, A...