Gammon
adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A cut of quick-cured pork leg. countable, uncountable
"[T]he cooks were laying a refection before him of sack and anchovies and garlic sausage and gammons of bacon and - this was the important item - a great pudding dish out of which rose the noble dome of a crisp brown pie-crust."
- 2 A joke, trick; play, sport, merriment. countable, dialectal, uncountable
- 3 A rope fastening a bowsprit to the stem of a ship (usually called a gammoning).
- 4 Chatter, ridiculous nonsense. dated, uncountable
"Some people maintains^([sic]) that an Englishman's house is his castle. That's gammon."
- 5 A middle-aged or older right-wing, reactionary white man, or such men collectively. UK, countable, derogatory, neologism, uncountable
"Yeah, let the bitch drown / Got the gammons all feeling sick now / Great Britannia's lost all hope, she's broke"
Show 4 more definitions
- 6 hind portion of a side of bacon wordnet
- 7 A victory in backgammon achieved when the opponent has not borne off a single stone. countable, uncountable
"Toward the end of the game Roger had not borne off a single stone belonging to Roseanna, and she scored a gammon. She could not hide the triumph in her eyes. “Perhaps you will play a better game if we play for something closer to your heart,” she suggested."
- 8 meat cut from the thigh of a hog (usually smoked) wordnet
- 9 Backgammon (the game itself). countable, rare, uncountable
"We started about 7:00 drinking beers and playing gammon. Then after getting a little “loose” we went to a girls dorm."
- 1 To cure bacon by salting.
- 2 To joke, kid around, play. dialectal
- 3 To lash with ropes (on a ship).
"“No, by thunder !” he cried, “it's us must break the treaty when the time comes; and till then I'll gammon that doctor, if I have to ile his boots with brandy.”"
- 4 To deceive; to lie plausibly to. colloquial, dated, transitive
"And no use for anyone to tell Charles that this was because the Family was in mourning for Mr Granville Darracott […]: Charles might only have been second footman at Darracott Place for a couple of months when that disaster occurred, but no one could gammon him into thinking that my lord cared a spangle for his heir."
- 5 To beat by a gammon (without the opponent bearing off a stone).
- 1 Fake, pretend; bullshit. Papua-New-Guinea
"I was just being gammon."
- 1 the Shelta or Cant language of the Irish Travelling Community. Ireland
Example
More examples"I prefer to eat gammon with mustard."
Etymology
From Middle English *gammon, gambon, from Old French gambon (compare modern French jambon (“ham”)), from gambe (“leg”), from Late Latin gamba, from Ancient Greek καμπή (kampḗ). Doublet of jambon and jamon.
From Middle English gamnen, gomnen, gamenen, gomenen, from Old English gamnian, gæmnian, gamenian (“to joke, play”), from Proto-West Germanic *gamanōn, from Proto-Germanic *gamanōną (“to play, have fun, joke”). Cognate with Middle High German gamenen (“to mock, make fun of”), Icelandic gamna (“to have fun”). More at game.
Perhaps related to the first etymology, with reference to tying up a ham.
Perhaps a special use of the word from etymology 2.
Gained popularity in 2017 (in the phrase "Great Wall of Gammon", likening the referents' rosy complexions to gammon (“ham, bacon”)), although the metaphor was in use earlier: the BBC points to a 2016 use of “gammon face”.
Related phrases
More for "gammon"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.