lam

noun

No English definition recorded for this entry.

Pronunciation: /læm/

Etymology: Borrowed from Cantonese 林 (lam4) or Cantonese 藍／蓝 (lam4). Doublet of Lin and Lim.

Etymology: From Arabic لَام (lām), the name of the letter ل (l).

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

Etymology: From Middle English lamen, lemen, from Old English lemian and Old Norse lemja; both from Proto-Germanic *lamjaną.

To 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 […]”
To 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.”