Other forms: hams
Ham is salted or smoked meat from a pig's leg. A slice of ham, ham sandwich, honey-roast ham.
It is always the leg, which is what separates it from bacon and from pork generally, and it is cured rather than merely cooked. A ham actor overacts, from an old theatrical slang. A radio ham is an amateur operator. Note that the Old English word meant the back of the knee.
1nounhamSalted or smoked meat from a pig's leg.
“She made ham and cheese sandwiches for the picnic.”
ham is a meat.
Old English hamm meant the hollow at the back of the knee, from a root meaning leg. The meat sense followed the body part.
Proto-Indo-European
*kónh₂m — leg
Proto-Germanic
*hamō
Proto-West Germanic
*hammu
Old English
hamm — inner or hind part of the knee, ham
Middle English
hamme
English, today
ham
Middle English hamme, from Old English hamm (“inner or hind part of the knee, ham”), from Proto-West Germanic hammu, from Proto-Germanic hamō, hammō, hanmō, from Proto-Indo-European kónh₂m (“leg”). Cognate with Dutch ham (“ham”), dialectal German Hamme (“hind part of the knee, ham”), dialectal Swedish ham (“the hind part of the knee”), Icelandic höm (“the ham or haunch of a horse”), Old Irish cnáim (“bone”), Ancient Greek κνήμη (“shinbone”). Compare gammon#Etymology_1 and gam#Etymology_1.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA