| Definitions | | gam |
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noun
- (slang): A person's leg.
- A collective noun used to refer to a group of whales; A pod.
- 1862, Henry Theodore Cheever, The Whalemen's Adventures in the Southern Ocean, Darton & Hodge, page 116.
- :Upon getting into a "" of whales, this boat, together with that of one of the mates, pulled for a single whale that was seen at a distance from the others, and succeeded in getting square up to their victim unperceived.
- (context, by extension) a social gathering of whalers or other ships.
- 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Harper and Brothers, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moby-Dick/Chapter_53, chapter 53.
- : But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word, Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster"s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it. Gam. NOUN"A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats" crews, the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.
verb to gam
- (nautical) to make a social visit on another ship at sea
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