lam
verbnounnouncommon in dialogue
- //læm//
To beat or thrash.
verb
- 1
informalTo beat or thrash.
1930, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Mule Bone, Act II, Scene 2, in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 5: The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move, edited by Leslie Catherine Sanders, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002, p. 102, An' fo' I knowed it, he done picked up that bone an' lammed me ovah de head wid it.
They lammed each other on the head with great, clumsy stone hammers; but their skulls were so hard that the hammers bounced off again […]
- 2
datedTo flee or run away.
[Gangster running away:] Batman and Robin! Let's lam!
[…]and she was so mad and so down deep vindictive that she reported to the police some false trumped-up hysterical crazy charge, and Dean had to lam from Hoboken.
Etymology
From Middle English lamen, lemen, from Old English lemian and Old Norse lemja; both from Proto-Germanic *lamjaną.
noun
- 1
slangA flight or escape.
on the lam
noun
- 1
The twenty-third letter of the Arabic alphabet, ل (l). It is preceded by ك (k) and followed by م (m).
Etymology
From Arabic لَام (lām), the name of the letter ل (l).
Forms
- plural
- lams
- past tense
- lammed
- past participle
- lammed
- present participle
- lamming
- third person singular
- lams