lam

present singular third person lams · participle present lamming · participle past lammed · past lammed · alternative lamm

1. informaltransitiveTo beat or thrash.

   A fist flew, whamming the punching bag, another lamming it in the center, and at last, a swift thrust of the foot pinning it to the wall.

   2 more examples

   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 […]

   1953, C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair, Collins, published 1998, Chapter

2. datedintransitiveslangTo flee or run away.

   [Gangster running away:] Batman and Robin! Let's lam!

   1947, Bill Finger, World's Finest Comics #30, "The Penny Plunderers!", p. 4

   1 more example

   […]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.

   1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, chapter 1, in On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC, part 1

plural lams · alternative lamm

1. slangA flight or escape.

   on the lam

plural lams

1. The twenty-third letter of the Arabic alphabet, ل (l). It is preceded by ك (k) and followed by م (m).

plural LAMs

1. abbreviationengineeringAbbreviation of light antiarmor/antiarmour missile.
2. abbreviationengineeringAbbreviation of land attack missile.
3. abbreviationengineeringAbbreviation of loitering attack missile.
4. abbreviationacronymAcronym of lactational amenorrhea method, a method of birth control through breastfeeding.
5. abbreviationmedicineAbbreviation of lymphangioleiomyomatosis

plural Lams

1. A surname from Cantonese.