Meaning of dam in English

dam

/dæm/ us

/dæm/

dam noun [C] (WALL)

a wall built across a river that stops the river's flow and collects the water, especially to make a reservoir (= an artificial lake) that provides water for an area:

The Aswan High Dam is on the River Nile in Egypt.

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dyke (WALL)

Katsuhiro Yamanashi/Sebun Photo/amana images/GettyImages

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Ditches, dams & tunnels

dam noun [C] (MOTHER)

the female parent of an animal, especially a horse:

The horse has American bloodlines on his dam's side.

Ask about the health and temperament of the sire and dam, the parents of the dog.

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sire

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The stamina inherited from his dam was the key to him winning the Millennium Derby.
In thoroughbred breeding, horses that have only the same mother are considered half-siblings, while those with the same sire and dam are full siblings.
Cigalas is the Spanish for langoustines, and therein lies the origin of the colt's name as his dam is Langoustine.

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Family: relations in general

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Names for the male & female of animals

Horses & similar animals

dam noun [C] (MOUTH)

a dental dam

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Dentistry

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dam

verb [ T ]

/dæm/ us

/dæm/

-mm-

to build a dam across a river in order to store water

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Closing and blocking

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Ditches, dams & tunnels

Phrasal verb

dam something up

(Definition of dam from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

dam | American Dictionary

dam

noun [ C ]

/dæm/

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a wall built across a river to stop the flow and collect the water, esp. to make a reservoir (= an artificial lake) that provides water for an area or can be used to make electricity

dam

verb [ T ]

/dæm/

-mm-

to build a dam across a river in order to store the water:

[ M ] Fish are affected when a river is dammed up.

(Definition of dam from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

DAM | Business English

DAM

noun [ U ]

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abbreviation for digital asset management

(Definition of dam from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of dam

dam

They then join with community members in participatory processes in order to evaluate dam planning.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Each subfamily was obtained by crossing one sire with five dams.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In this pedigree only 7 dams were crossed with more than 1 sire while 6 sires were mated with more than one dam.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Because each dam was mated with only one sire, 146 full-sib families and ten half-sib families were produced.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This is a simple half-sib population, with each sire having 30 progeny and each dam only one progeny.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

If s1 is chosen in this way, then the upstream dam will normally be larger, and the downstream smaller.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Canoeing took place on a farm dam which was filled by pump from the local river.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Locks allow vessels to move across dams, but may constitute a capacity bottleneck in the waterway network.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The lambs were the offspring of 37 sires and 491 dams.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It gradually reached the southeast and the north as large dams were also constructed in those locales.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

When nursed by a control-fed dam, the pancreatic weight was comparable with controls by weaning.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The longitudinal sections extend up to two kilometers downstream of the dam.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They are the only groups who can know the immediate local impacts of the dam.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

I began to teach them courses about environmental legislation and law and social and environmental impacts of big dams.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

And there was still no dam after the second and third batches.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.