Yam
name, noun, verb, slang ·1 syllable ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Any climbing vine of the genus Dioscorea in the Eastern and Western hemispheres, usually cultivated.
- 2 Home. regional
- 3 edible tuberous root of various yam plants of the genus Dioscorea grown in the tropics world-wide for food wordnet
- 4 The edible, starchy, tuberous root of that plant, a tropical staple food.
"Inwardly Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to understand fully the difficult art of preparing seed-yams. But he thought that one could not begin too early. Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another was a very great man indeed."
- 5 sweet potato with deep orange flesh that remains moist when baked wordnet
Show 7 more definitions
- 6 A sweet potato; a tuber from the species Ipomoea batatas. US
- 7 any of a number of tropical vines of the genus Dioscorea many having edible tuberous roots wordnet
- 8 A potato. Scotland
- 9 edible tuber of any of several yams wordnet
- 10 An oca; a tuber from the species Oxalis tuberosa. New-Zealand
- 11 Taro. Malaysia, Singapore
- 12 An orange-brown colour, like the flesh of the yam.
- 1 Pronunciation spelling of am. alt-of, pronunciation-spelling
"“Stay, jailer, stay, and hear my woe,” repeating again and again, very softly, the line at the end of each stanza, “I am not mad, I am not mad.” Except she sang it: “I yam not mad, I yam not mad.”"
- 2 To eat. UK, slang
"“If I was that snake I’d just open my jaw and yam that fool up in one bite!”"
- 3 To dunk on; to beat humiliatingly. especially
"For quotations using this term, see Citations:yam."
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"Purple, violet, or lavender has been really my favourite colour since being a toddler in jungle-surrounded Ferry, Batangas, Philippines, in the 1960s, as my aunties wore lipstick and nails in that colour, and we ate "ube," a purple yam, which had that colour. Now, I associate it with the language Lojban, because of its creative energy."
Etymology
Borrowed from Portuguese inhame and Spanish ñame, likely from Wolof ñàmbi (“cassava”) or a related word. The term was spelled yam as early as 1657.
Alternative form of hjem. Likely caused by influence from Old Norse heim (“home, homewards”), the accusative form of heimr (“abode, world, land”), from Proto-Germanic *haimaz. More at home.
Ultimately from Fula nyaamude (“to eat”) or a cognate Fula-Wolof term.
Apparently a variation of jam (“dunk”, verb).
Borrowed from Cantonese 任 (jam4).
Related phrases
More for "yam"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.