seam

plural seams · alternative obsolete seme

1. businessA folded-back and stitched piece of fabric; especially, the stitching that joins two or more pieces of fabric.

   Mind you, clothes were clothes in those days. […] Frills, ruffles, flounces, lace, complicated seams and gores: not only did they sweep the ground and have to be held up in one hand elegantly as you walked along, but they had little capes or coats or feather boas.

   1977, Agatha Christie, chapter 4, in An Autobiography, part II, London: Collins, →ISBN

2. A suture.
3. geographyA thin stratum, especially of an economically viable material such as coal or mineral.

   He even roused himself to go to the mines once more: […]. He sat there, crippled, in a tub, with the under-ground manager showing him the seam with a powerful torch.

   1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter IX, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC, page 126

4. ball gamesThe stitched equatorial seam of a cricket ball; the sideways movement of a ball when it bounces on the seam.
5. businessA joint formed by mating two separate sections of materials.

   Seams can be made or sealed in a variety of ways, including adhesive bonding, hot-air welding, solvent welding, using adhesive tapes, sealant, etc.

6. A line or depression left by a cut or wound; a scar; a cicatrix.
7. figurativelyA line of junction; a joint.

   Precepts should be so finely wrought together[…]that no coarse seam may discover where they join.

   1697, Joseph Addison, Essay on Virgil's Georgics

present singular third person seams · participle present seaming · participle past seamed · past seamed · alternative obsolete seme

1. To put together with a seam.

   Thus, seamed with many scars, / Bursting these prison bars, / Up to its native stars / My soul ascended!

   , The Skeleton in Armor

2. To make the appearance of a seam in, as in knitting a stocking; hence, to knit with a certain stitch, like that in such knitting.
3. To mark with a seam or line; to scar.

   Seam'd o'er with wounds which his own sabre gave.

   1725–1726, Homer, “Book 4”, in [William Broome, Elijah Fenton, Alexander Pope], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], London: […] Bernard Lintot, →OCLC

4. To crack open along a seam.

   Later their lips began to parch and seam.

   1880, Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

   1 more example

   A stretch of white clayey soil, perfectly dry, which the summer heat seamed with a network of minute cracks and fissures.

   1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 1, page 161

5. ball gamesOf the ball, to move sideways after bouncing on the seam.
6. ball gamesOf a bowler, to make the ball move thus.

plural seams

1. historicalAn old English measure of grain, containing eight bushels.
2. historicalAn old English measure of glass, containing twenty-four weys of five pounds, or 120 pounds.

   As white glass was 6s. the 'seam', containing 24 'weys' (pise, or pondera) of 5 lb., and 2½ lb. was reckoned sufficient to make one foot of glazing, the cost of glass would be 1½d. leaving 2½d. for labour.

   1952, L. F. Salzman, Building in England, page 175

alternative saim

1. UKdialectalobsoleteuncountableGrease; tallow; lard.

   scour their rusty shields with seam

   1697, Virgil, “The Seventh Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   shall the proud lord That bastes his arrogance with his own seam And never suffers matter of the world

   c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]