cam

Pluralcams

Formscams, camming, cammed

1. 1
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A camera, a device for taking photographs or recording video.

   Turn the cam around so everyone can see the cake.

   The cam over the shop door caught the whole thing on video.

   Similarcamera

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A rotating or sliding machine part that drives the motion of a rod, lever, or block that slides or rolls against it.

   As the shaft rotates, each cam presses against a valve and forces it open.

   A cam on the drive shaft rocks the lever back and forth with every turn.

   Note

   The name arrived from Dutch in the sixteenth century, where kam meant the cog of a wheel and, before that, a comb; Dutch still builds its cogwheel words on it. English comb grew from the same root, so cam and comb are one old word in two spellings. A shaft usually carries a row of them, each timed to push a valve open as it turns.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A curved wedge that pivots on an axis and is used to force or clamp two pieces together.

   Turn the cam until the two panels are pressed tightly against each other.

   The woodworker tightened the jig by flipping a small cam against the board.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   An unauthorized copy of a film made by recording it with a camera in a movie theater.

   Within hours of the premiere, a shaky cam of the movie had leaked online.

   Pirate sites rushed out cams of the blockbuster long before any clean copy appeared.

   Note

   Pirates named this copy after the tool that makes it, clipping camera to cam: someone in a theater seat films the screen, often with a hidden device. That origin explains the reputation. A cam is shaky and dim, the audience laughs and coughs on the soundtrack, and it ranks among the poorest versions of a film in circulation, outlasted by any clean copy.

5. 5
   verbintransitive

   To connect with someone by webcam for a live video chat.

   The two of them cam with each other every night while he's working overseas.

   We cammed with the grandparents so they could watch the baby open her presents.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A spring-loaded camming device, which a climber wedges into a crack in the rock to make a temporary belay.

   She slotted a cam into the crack and clipped the rope through it before moving up.

   The route takes small cams, so bring a full rack.

   Note

   Climbers shorten spring-loaded camming device to cam, and the name comes straight from the machine part. A trigger draws the curved lobes in; released inside a crack, the springs press them against the rock, and the pull of a fall rotates them harder into the walls. Climbers speak of placing a cam, and of a route that takes small cams.

7. 7
   noundialectalUKcountable

   A raised ridge or mound of earth.

   A long cam of earth marked the boundary between the two farms.

   We sheltered from the wind behind the cam at the bottom of the field.

   Similarridge, mound, bank

   Note

   This belongs to the dialects of Britain rather than to standard English, and it is best kept to writing that reproduces local speech. Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character (1861) gives it in a dialect line, cum doun t' cam' soid, spelled the way it was said. In ordinary prose, ridge, bank or mound will be understood everywhere.

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