ham

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A thigh and/or buttock of a hog slaughtered for meat; (occasionally) the corresponding cut from some other animal.

   "I'll have you so your hams will stand out like horse's shanks!" de declared.

2. 2
   noun

   Meat from the thigh and/or buttock of a hog cured for food.

   a little piece of ham for the cat

3. 3
   noun

   An overacting or amateurish performer; an actor with an especially showy or exaggerated style.

   Writing in The New Yorker in 2005, James Wood praised Mr. McCarthy as “a colossally gifted writer” and “one of the great hams of American prose, who delights in producing a histrionic rhetoric that brilliantly ventriloquizes the King James Bible, Shakespearean and Jacobean tragedy, Melville, Conrad, and Faulkner.”

4. 4
   verb

   To overact; to act with exaggerated emotions.

   Near-synonym: camp it up

5. 5
   noun

   meat cut from the thigh of a hog (usually smoked)

6. 6
   noun

   an unskilled actor who overacts

7. 7
   noun

   a licensed amateur radio operator

8. 8
   verb

   exaggerate one's acting

Etymology

* As an English and German surname, variant of Hamm. * As a Dutch surname, from the noun ham (“bend in a river”). Compare Van Ham, Vanderham. * As a French surname, from several placenames, from the Frankish source of the Dutch word above. * As a Serbo-Croatian, Slovak and Hungarian surname (Hám), from the noun hám (“harness”), and sometimes from the German sense above. * As a Slovene surname, possibly from the "harness" or German senses above, or from ham (“grab, bite”). * As a Czech surname, shortened from Abraham. * As a Korean surname, from the name 함 (ham) (more at Ham). Compare Hahm. * A…