1 [C,U] the top part of a pig's leg that has been CURED (= preserved using salt or smoke) and is eaten as food; the meat from this:
The hams were cooked whole. * a slice of ham * a ham sandwich
compareBACON, GAMMON, PORK
2 [C] a person who sends and receives radio messages as a hobby rather than as a job:
a radio ham
3 [C] (informal) (often used as an adjective) an actor who performs badly, especially by exaggerating emotions:
a ham actor / performance
4 [C,usually pl.] (informal) the back part of a person's leg above the knee
seealsoHAMSTRING
verb (-mm-)
IDIOMS
ham it up (informal) (especially of actors) when people ham it up, they deliberately exaggerate their emotions or movements
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for ham is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is ham a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, ham is tagged as noun.
Does ham appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — ham appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.