DAM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Dam

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noun

Dam n.

A female parent; used of beasts, especially of quadrupeds; sometimes applied in contempt to a human mother. "Our sire and dam, now confined to horses, are a relic of this age (13th century)...Dame is used of a hen; we now make a great difference between dame and dam." "The dam runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went."

A king or crowned piece in the game of draughts.

Dam n.

A barrier to prevent the flow of a liquid; esp., a bank of earth, or wall of any kind, as of masonry or wood, built across a water course, to confine and keep back flowing water.

(Metal.) A firebrick wall, or a stone, which forms the front of the hearth of a blast furnace.

Dam plate (Blast Furnace), an iron plate in front of the dam, to strengthen it.

verb

Dam v. t. (past & past part. dammed; pres. part. damming)

To obstruct or restrain the flow of, by a dam; to confine by constructing a dam, as a stream of water; generally used with in or up. "I'll have the current in this place dammed up." "A weight of earth that dams in the water."

To shut up; to stop up; to close; to restrain. "The strait pass was dammed With dead men hurt behind, and cowards."

To dam out, to keep out by means of a dam.

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Etymology of 'Dam'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Dam" Quotes from Famous Books

... this way he imagines that he sees the emblems of the Bodhisattva spring up round him one by one and finally he himself assumes the shape of Avalokita and becomes one with him. Something similar still exists in Tibet where every Lama chooses a tutelary deity or Yi-dam whom he summons in visible form after meditation and fasting.[299] Though this procedure when set forth methodically in a mediaeval manual seems an absurd travesty of Buddhism, yet it has links with the early faith. It is admitted ...

— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... and size. There were few marks of modern improvement. The environs of the place intimated neither the solitude of decay, nor the bustle of novelty; the houses were old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river murmured freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by a dam, nor ...

— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... Petits Poemes en Prose. Their principal resemblance to Baudelaire's is that they are rather longer and not quite so good. They are ve-ry cle-ver (words of two syllables), O so aw-ful-ly cle-ver (words of three), O so dam-na-bly cle-ver (words of a devil of a number of syllables). I have written fifteen in a fortnight. I have also written some beautiful poetry. I would like a cake and a cricket-bat; and a pass-key to Heaven if you please, and as much money as my friend ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... also begs of all following kings that this bridge (or, dam) of charity, which is (a benefit) for all nations, may be perpetuated ...

— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... from Texas Creek at a point 480 feet vertical above the Bloomfield flume. An aqueduct about 4,000 feet long, partly of ditch and partly of flume, was needed to bring the water from the catchment dam on the creek to the brow of the gorge. The vertical head for the pipe could therefore be from a maximum of 460 feet down to any lesser head; with a head of 460 feet, the pipe would be 4,790 feet long; and with a head of 220 feet, the length ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

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