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cramming

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,148 of 15,258leans spoken

Cramming is trying to learn a great deal at the last minute. Cramming for exams, all-night cramming, no time for cramming.

It works for a day and fails for a month: material learned in one block is forgotten fast, where the same hours spread out are retained far better, which is one of the best-established findings in the study of memory. Everybody knows this and does it anyway. Note cram, meaning to stuff.

Definitions of cramming

  1. 1nouncrammingTrying to learn a great deal at the last minute.B2+

    “After a whole night of cramming, she fell asleep in the middle of the exam.”

cramming is a way of studying.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ger- — to assemble; collect; gather

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *krammōną

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *krammōn

  4. Old English

    crammian — to cram; stuff

  5. Middle English

    crammen

  6. English

    cram

  7. English, today

    cramming

Built from

  • *krimmaną · Proto-Germanic — to stuff

cram comes from Middle English crammen, from Old English crammian (“to cram; stuff”), from Proto-West Germanic krammōn, from Proto-Germanic krammōną, a secondary verb derived from krimmaną (“to stuff”), from Proto-Indo-European ger- (“to assemble; collect; gather”). Compare Old English crimman (“to cram; stuff; insert; press; bruise”), Icelandic kremja (“to squeeze; crush; bruise”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in School Subjects

Practise this word

cramming in the wild

  • The English name is derived from the slang term cramming, meaning to study a large amount of material in a short period of time.

    Cram school

  • The word "crammer" may be used to refer to the school or to an individual teacher who assists a student in cramming.

    Cram school

  • In education, cramming is the practice of working intensively to absorb large volumes of information in short amounts of time.

    Cramming (education)

  • National Association of Attorneys General, cramming was the 4th most common consumer complaint of 2007 in the United States.

    Cramming (fraud)

  • Why Simmons insists on cramming them all into a 288-page novel is a mystery in itself.

    Hard as Nails (novel)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the crammian family

cramcramming

cramming — used about once every 5,793 pages · #10,148 · point at the bar for the others