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yam
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
yam
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He walks down the Stroud Green Road, past the halal shops and the yam shops.
▪ It would probably be more fun than listening to some self-deceiving gilgul spin her miserable yam.
▪ Make the oven baking even more efficient by roasting the yams as well.
▪ Other than the high yam content, what else is different?
▪ The yam pieces were then simmered in water with the sailcloth for ten or twelve hours.
▪ They controlled this cottage industry by buying, selling, transporting and exchanging raw wool, spun yam and woven cloth.
▪ This liquid was made by chopping up the roots of an inedible yam which looked like stringy, tough beetroot.
▪ Tillman admitted, going to wash his hands with a lump of soap resembling processed yam.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Yam

Yam \Yam\ (y[a^]m), n. [Pg. inhame, probably from some native name.]

  1. (Bot.) A large, esculent, farinaceous tuber of various climbing plants of the genus Dioscorea; also, the plants themselves. Mostly natives of warm climates. The plants have netted-veined, petioled leaves, and pods with three broad wings. The commonest species is Dioscorea sativa, but several others are cultivated.

  2. (Bot.) Any one of several cultural varieties of the sweet potato. [U. S.] Chinese yam, a plant ( Dioscorea Batatas) with a long and slender tuber, hardier than most of the other species. Wild yam.

    1. A common plant ( Dioscorea villosa) of the Eastern United States, having a hard and knotty rootstock.

    2. An orchidaceous plant ( Gastrodia sesamoides) of Australia and Tasmania.

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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
yam

1580s, igname (current form by 1690s), from Portuguese inhame or Spanish igname, from a West African language (compare Fulani nyami "to eat;" Twi anyinam "species of yam"); the word in American and Jamaican English probably is directly from West African sources. The Malay name is ubi, whence German öbiswurzel.

Wiktionary
yam

Etymology 1 n. 1 (context botany English) Any climbing vine of the genus ''Dioscorea'' in the Eastern and Western hemispheres, usually cultivated. 2 The edible, starchy, tuberous root of that plant, a tropical staple food. 3 (context US English) A sweet potato; a tuber from the species ''Ipomoea batatas''. 4 (context Scotland English) potato. Etymology 2

n. (context Cumberland English) home!Home.

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WordNet
yam

  1. n. edible tuber of any of several yams

  2. any of a number of tropical vines of the genus Dioscorea many having edible tuberous roots [syn: yam plant]

  3. sweet potato with deep orange flesh that remains moist when baked

  4. edible tuberous root of various yam plants of the genus Dioscorea grown in the tropics world-wide for food

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Wikipedia
Yam

Yam or YAM may refer to:

YAM (Yet Another Mailer)

YAM (short for Yet Another Mailer) is a MIME-compliant e-mail client written for AmigaOS based computers. It supports multi- POP3, APOP, SMTP, TLSv1/ SSLv3, multiple users, PGP, unlimited hierarchical folders, filters, a configurable GUI (based on MUI) and an ARexx interface and many other features which are common for Mail User Agents ( MUA) today.

Yam (god)

Yam, Yamm, or Yammu was a Levantine sea and river god, popular in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages.

Yam, from the Canaanite word Yam meaning "Sea", also written Yaw, is one name of the Ugaritic god of Rivers and Sea. Also titled Judge Nahar ("Judge River"), he is also one of the 'ilhm ( Elohim) or sons of El, the name given to the Levantine pantheon. Others dispute the existence of the alternative names, claiming it is a mistranslation of a damaged tablet. Despite linguistic overlap, theologically this god is not a part of the later subregional monotheistic theology, but rather is part of a broader and archaic Levantine polytheism.

Yam is the deity of the primordial chaos and represents the power of the sea, untamed and raging; he is seen as ruling storms and the disasters they wreak. The gods cast out Yam from the heavenly mountain Sappan (modern Jebel Aqra; Sappan is cognate to Tsephon). The seven-headed dragon Lotan is associated closely with him and he is often described as the serpent. He is the Canaanite equivalent of the Sumerian Tiamat, the primordial mother goddess.

Of all the gods, despite being the champion of El, Yam holds special hostility against Baal Hadad, son of Dagon. Yam is a deity of the sea and his palace is in the abyss associated with the depths, or Biblical tehwom, of the oceans. (This is not to be confused with the abode of Mot, the ruler of the netherworlds.) In Ugaritic texts, Yam's special enemy Hadad is also known as the "king of heaven" and the "first born son" of El, whom ancient Greeks identified with their god Cronus, just as Baal was identified with Zeus, Yam with Poseidon and Mot with Hades. Yam wished to become the Lord god in his place. In turns the two beings kill each other, yet Hadad is resurrected and Yam also returns. Some authors have suggested that these tales reflect the experience of seasonal cycles in the Levant.

Yam (route)

Yam (, Örtöö, checkpoint) is a supply point route messenger system employed and extensively used and expanded by Genghis Khan and used by subsequent Great Khans and Khans.

Relay stations were used to give food, shelter and spare horses for Mongol army messengers. Genghis Khan gave special attention to Yam because Mongol armies traveled very fast, so their messengers had to be even faster, covering 200–300 km per day. The system was used to speed up the process of information and intelligence.

The system was preserved in Russian Tsardom after the disintegration of the Golden Horde.

Yam (vegetable)

Yam is the common name for some plant species in the genus Dioscorea (family Dioscoreaceae) that form edible tubers.

These are perennial herbaceous vines cultivated for the consumption of their starchy tubers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Oceania. There are many cultivars of yam. Although some varieties of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) are also called yam in parts of the United States and Canada, sweet potato is not part of the family Dioscoreaceae but belongs in the unrelated morning glory family Convolvulaceae.

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Usage examples of "yam".

This human cargo represents a weight of about twenty tons, which is equivalent to that of thirty persons, two boars, three sows, twelve piglets, thirty fowls, ten dogs, twenty rats, a hundred balled or potted breadfruit and banana plants, and twelve tons of watergourds, seeds, yams, tubers, coconuts, adzes and weapons.

While Brown went to fetch some wild yams, Minarii kindled a fire, Seated several stones, and dropped them into a calabash of water, which began to boil at once.

Eggs were then dropped in till the calabash was full, and the yams hastily scraped and roasted on the coals.

My zealous body-servant brought from the house a calabash of poee-poee, half a dozen young cocoanuts--stripped of their husks--three pipes, as many yams, and me on his back a part of the way.

As they sat around her kitchen table, the old lady served them pork grillades over cheese grits with sides of collard greens, black-eyed peas, and buttered yams.

That night all but one of the nine men had their throats cut in their sleep and ended up the next day headless and laid out like pigs on mumu fires with yams and tubers.

She could help Israel build a Negev Canal, and Israel could give her Mediterranean bases at Haifa and Nahal Yam.

Pepper and some other spices flourish, and the soil with but a little cultivation produces rice wet and dry, tapioca, gambier, sugar-cane, coffee, yams, sweet potatoes, cocoa, sago, cotton, tea, cinchona, india rubber, and indigo.

Yam and could not help feeling he looked indecent with all those silver twiddly works showing.

Hawkers with trays around their necks were selling rice-cakes, yakitori, baked yams, steamed buns, and alcoholic drinks.

There he was given roast yam, fish and coconut, and assigned his own palm-thatched hut where for days he slept, waking only to eat and sleep again.

His right hand swatted the fist out of the way like a kitten batting at a ball of yam.

Heaps of wild yams, white starchy breadroots, and potatolike groundnuts boiled gently in skin pots slung over fires.

And lower down the great forest trees arch over it, and the sunbeams trickle through them, and dance in many a quiet pool, turning the far-down sands to gold, brightening majestic tree-ferns, and shining on the fragile polypodium tamariscinum which clings tremblingly to the branches of the graceful waringhan, on a beautiful lygodium which adorns the uncouth trunk of an artocarpus, on glossy ginger-worts and trailing yams, on climbers and epiphytes, and on gigantic lianas which, climbing to the tops of the tallest trees, descend in vast festoons, many of them with orange and scarlet flowers and fruitage, passing from tree to tree, and interlacing the forest with a living network, while selaginellas and lindsayas, and film ferns, and trichomanes radicans drape the rocks in feathery green, along with mosses scarcely distinguishable from ferns.

Winding picturesquely among the trees, well-worn trails led to the Goat-House, to the western slope where Williams lived, to the Aute Valley where the principal gardens of the cloth-plant had been laid out, to the yam and sweet-potato patches and plantain walks, to the rock cisterns Christian had insisted on building in case of drought, to the Rope, and to the saw pit, still used occasionally when someone was in need of plank.