Noun: ram
Sample Sentences
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The solid oak door—he fingered it again—was as though made to resist a ram, the walls built to withstand a siege, and every stone and brick in wall, bench, or floor was as immovable as the face of a rock. [1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London:]
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About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad very low in the water, almost, to my brother's perception, like a water-logged ship. This was the ram Thunder Child. [1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 178:]
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He describes the operation thus: "The heavy ram employed to impart the finishing strokes, hoisted up with double purchase and snail's pace to the summit of the Piling Engine, and then falling down like a thunderbolt on the head of the devoted timber, driving it perhaps a single half inch in to the stratum below, is well calculated to put to the test the virtue of patience, while it illustrates the old adage of—slow and sure." [1952 July, W. R. Watson, “Sankey Viaduct and Embankment”, in Railway Magazine, page 487:]
Nouns inflected like ram
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English ram, rom, ramme, from Old English ramm (“ram”), from Proto-Germanic *rammaz (“ram”), possibly from *rammaz (“strong”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Rom (“ram”), Dutch ram (“a male sheep”), German Ramm, Ramme (“ram”). Possibly akin also to Danish ram (“sharp; acrid; rank”), Swedish ram (“strong; perfect”), Faroese ramur (“strong; competent”), Icelandic rammur (“strong; sturdy”). See: Middle English Nouns '
ram', Old English Nouns '
ramm', Dutch Nouns '
ram', Danish Nouns '
ram', Swedish Nouns '
ram', Faroese Nouns '
ramur', Icelandic Nouns '
rammur'.