Other forms: slammed, slams, slamming
To slam a door is to shut it hard enough to bang through the whole house. Wind catching a window, a teenager slamming a bedroom door, a car boot slammed shut in the rain.
Anything can be slammed down or into something: a phone slammed down, brakes slammed on, a lorry slamming into a barrier. Newspapers use slam for attacking someone in words — 'Minister slams new plan' — a headline word you will read far more than you say. A slam is the bang itself, and it sits inside fixed names: a slam dunk in basketball, a grand slam in tennis, a poetry slam where people perform poems in competition. Slam is always force; a door closed gently is never slammed.
1verbslamTo shut something with great force and a loud bang.
“She slammed the door and the pictures shook on the wall.”
2verbputTo put, push or throw something down with force.
“He slammed his keys on the table and walked out.”
3verbcriticiseTo criticise someone or something harshly, especially in the press.
“The report slams the company for ignoring safety rules.”
4nounshuttingA loud bang made by something shutting hard.
“I heard the slam of a car door outside.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Slam has no Old English record. It seems to have come from Scandinavian, from Old Norse slæma, to swing a weapon or strike something out of reach, alongside slambra, to slam. Norwegian slamre and Swedish slamra still mean to clatter and bang. The word arrived as a noise and has stayed one.
Old Norse
slæma
Middle English
*slammen
English, today
slam
Built from
From Middle English slammen not recorded, apparently from a Scandinavian source ultimately from Old Norse slæma, slœma (“to slam, swing a weapon, strike an object out of reach”), related to Old Norse slamra, slambra (“to slam”). Cognate with Norwegian Bokmål slamre (“to slam”), Swedish slamra (“to pound, beat, make a clatter, rattle”), Norwegian Nynorsk slamra (“to sway, dangle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA