dam

UK/ˈdæm/US/ˈdæm/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,407 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: dams

A dam is a wall built across a river to hold the water back. Build a dam, the dam burst, behind the dam.

The water pressing on it rises with depth rather than with the size of the lake, which is why a dam is thicker at the bottom. A dam is also a mother animal in breeding records, which is a separate word.

dam — Wiki Commons users Qurren at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qurren · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of dam

1noundamA wall built across a river to hold the water back.B1+
“The new dam will provide electricity for the whole region.”

dam is a barrier.

Where it comes from

Old English damm names the barrier, from a Germanic root.

Proto-Germanic
*dammaz
Proto-West Germanic
*damm
Old English
*damm
Middle English
dam
English, today
dam

From Middle English dam, from Old English damm, from Proto-West Germanic damm, from Proto-Germanic dammaz.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

dam in the wild

Nevertheless, the dam was turned over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.
Hoover Dam
Route 93 ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.
Hoover Dam
An early dam was Jawa Dam in modern Jordan, built around 3000 BCE.
Dam
The Hittite Empire built several dams in modern Turkey between the 17th and 13th centuries BCE.
Dam
The dam improves the Yangtze River's shipping capacity and provides flood control, helping to protect millions of people from severe flooding on the Yangtze Plain.
Three Gorges Dam

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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

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dam