ram1
/ram
/noun
1An uncastrated male sheep.Mr Watkinson, from Constable Burton, near Leyburn, won best male with his aged ram....
- So a bellwether is the head ram with a bell hung around its neck.
- Young rams fertilize ewes using coursing tactics, whose success is independent of their dominance rank.
1.1 (the Ram) The zodiacal sign or constellation Aries.
2A battering ram.Also, castle guards often poured hot oil or other things onto the ram and its engineers....
- Süleyman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century extended his reach from the Sudan and the northern shore of Africa to Baghdad and far into Europe, where - twice - Turkish rams would batter at the gates of Vienna.
- Tense minutes passed as the sound of rams battering against the main gate began to ring throughout the valley.
2.1 historical A beak or other projecting part of the bow of a warship, for piercing the sides of other ships.Its bronze ram could smash enemy ships and armed soldiers could leap aboard a foe's vessel in hand-to-hand combat with spears and swords....
- The galley's major weapon was originally a ram on the water-line, used to hole enemy ships or to smash their oars.
- The Virginia carried ten major guns (four in each broadside, one bow and one stern gun) and an iron ram.
3The falling weight of a piledriving machine.He says one man with a hoe ram on a Bobcat can break the same amount of concrete that two or three men could do with a jackhammer....
- The high-speed tine rams push into the turf and then pull out quickly, leaving little or no scuffing at the top of the hole.
4A hydraulic water-raising or lifting machine.Burnside Autocyl Ltd, Tullow is a European leader in the manufacture of hydraulic cylinders and rams.
4.1The piston of a hydrostatic press.Grasp the press body with your left hand, then lower the ram by pulling the lever with your right....
- The press consists of the die, a pressure cylinder, the ram, and a container which receives the preheated ingot, or billet, to be extruded.
- This idea was developed in 1820 by Thomas Burr, who produced a hydraulic press with a mandrel attached to the ram.
verb (rams, ramming, rammed) [with object and adverbial of direction]
1Roughly force (something) into place: he rammed his stick into the ground...
- The raven shot down through the dark and rammed his beak into the sergeant's hat.
- She pulled her sword close, and rammed the blade's tip into the ground with great force.
- Swerving around, he then rammed them into the wall with all the force he could bear.
Synonyms
force, thrust, plunge, stab, push, sink, dig, stick, cram, jam, stuff, pack, compress, squeeze, wedge, press, tamp, pound, drive, hammer, bang
1.1 [with object] (Of a vehicle or vessel) be driven violently into (another vehicle or vessel) in an attempt to stop or damage it: their boat was rammed by a Japanese warship...
- In the course of the dispute, police harassment of the strikers resulted in a police car ramming a worker's vehicle at a Noumea intersection.
- The man stole two cars, smashed into two vehicles, attempted to ram Garda patrol cars, reversed back into a Garda motorcyclist and attempted to hijack another car before being captured.
- The van then rammed the car off the road and sped off.
1.2 [no object, with adverbial] Crash violently against something: the stolen car rammed into the front of the house...
- Taylor drove off and rammed head-on into a car driven by a pensioner before he managed to get away.
- Never stop to argue a fine point with another driver who has just rammed into your stationary car at a red light.
- In a matter of seconds my father had rammed into the car in front of us.
Synonyms
hit, strike, crash into, collide with, be in collision with, meet head-on, run into, slam (into), smash into, dash against, crack into/against, bump (into), bang (into), knock into, butt;
North American impact
1.3 [with object] (often as adjective rammed) Beat (earth) with a heavy implement to make it hard and firm: the walls are made of rammed earth...
- Avram lives in the next valley over from me in a rammed earth house on a hill above the Kenwood winery.
- The front is clad with split cedar wood shingles, and the rear is a long curving terracotta wall of rammed earth.
- The new structures consist of a steel frame and either compressed earth blocks or rammed earth and a tiled roof.
2 (be rammed) British informal (Of a place) be very crowded: the club is rammed to the rafters every week
Phrases
ram something down someone's throat
ram something home
Derivatives
rammer
- So the Sound Room did what other stores in this situation do - they installed some big concrete blocks to discourage would-be rammers.
- That would mean that instead of instantly exploding like a bomb, liquid fire would spew out of the fuel tank of the rammer.
Origin
Old English ram(m), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ram.
Rhymes
RAM2
/ram/abbreviation
1 Computing Random-access memory.
2(In the UK) Royal Academy of Music.