ram-jam

present singular third person ram-jams · participle present ram-jamming · participle past ram-jammed · past ram-jammed

1. To roughly force into a small space or difficult position.

   Carburetors, too, are poorly built to stand the racket and ram-jamming they meet.

   1913, Farm Equipment Dealer - Volume 11, page 326

   3 more examples

   Marsh went on as his prisoner drank. "Because you're caught in the middle of my alternate plan, Ram-Jam, which ram-jams your ass between the rockiest rock and the hardest hard place you ever imagined.

   1988, Lloyd Pye Lloyd Pye, Mismatch, →ISBN, page 134

   Unlike cattle going to market, there was no ram-jamming them up a shoot and hauling them off to market where prices were usually poor to bad.

   2004, David Allen Goodwin, No Matter What: Never Say Die, →ISBN, page 100

   As we approached the consignee where we were going to drop the trailer, he was ram-jamming the shifting lever and raking the gears trying to shift without using the clutch, and cursing as if it were the truck's fault he couldn't do it.

   2011, Hal Howard, Truckin’ With Bubba ... and I Ain’t Bubba, →ISBN, page 7

2. To travel about with no fixed destination.

   This place might be work, but it sure beats ram-jamming around just for beans.

   2013, Penelope Williamson, Heart of the West, →ISBN, page 188

   2 more examples

   A grand duke, or a lesser titled personage, in a car goes ram-jamming over Moscow at 40 miles an hour up, with no one to say him nay.

   1909, Around the World with Taft

   She planted her legs widely beneath her, beside her rig lashed to the hull with bungee cords—which she could hardly see in the explosion of sun off the white deck of the ram-jamming boat.

   2017, Elise Levine, Blue Field, →ISBN, page 77

plural ram-jams

1. A forceful poke or shove.

   An' a ram-jam now Git alon, Old Bones!

   2007, United States. National Park Service, Historic Resource Study: Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, August 2007

   2 more examples

   A fake pass contributed five more, and ram-jams at center and savage jabs at tackle netted ten.

   1902, The Epworth Herald - Volume 13, page 535

   Era Elbertus tells us, "Indulge an automobile appetite with a push-cart income, and it's you for the ram-jams and stripes."

   1910, Iowa. Reformatory at Anamosa, The Reformatory Press - Volume 13

2. A person who forces his or her way around.

   1 more example

   Now, thank goodness, we have broken away to acclaim actors who, without reverting to strut and bellow, are playing with a heartening drive and a mingling of subtlety and power ; who give to our stage its proper flash, its kindling glow ; and who make of the theatre more than a home for the "gilded gear," the rowdier ram-jams, and the "dim, moon-eyed fishes" that stare at them decorously.

   1947, Malcolm Elwin, The Pleasure Ground: A Miscellany of English Writing, page 247

plural Ram-jams

1. datednonce wordA person of vaguely Middle Eastern ethnicity.

   Rupees," I answered, before an admiring crowd of Ram-jams, Rajahs, and such like. “

   1876, Punch - Volumes 69-73, page 276

   3 more examples

   It is not a conclusive proof of our being enlightened Christians, that we sneer and misinterpret bygone creeds, as though in the old Greek and Roman poetry were shewn nothing worthier than Fetish idols, rotten mummies, Australasian Ram-Jams and Ethiopian Mumbo-Jumbos.

   1863, The Eagle: A Magazine - Volumes 3-4, page 280

   He lives in the New Forest, Lady Ellington, and if when you are passing you hear the puffs of a loud steam-engine somewhere near Brockenhurst you will know it is Tom doing deep breathing. He expects in time to become a Ram-jam or something, by breathing himself into Raj-pan-puta.

   1906, Edward Frederic Benson, The Angel of Pain - Volume 0, page 16

   No problem, I was still 'black and beautiful', and they were something else, Indian or Pakistani; 'Ram-jams' was what we called them or 'those at the corner house'.

   1985, The Spectator - Volume 254, page 15