slam
Noun pluralslams
Pluralslams
- 1To close something with sudden force, making a sharp bang.
He slammed the car door and stormed off down the street.
Please don't slam the gate; the noise wakes the baby.
Similarbang
Note
The root of the whole family is Middle English slammen, a form never actually recorded. It came from a Scandinavian source going back to Old Norse slæma, 'to swing a weapon, strike'. The verb is ergative: you slam a door, and a door slams. Slammed shut is the set phrase for a sudden, total closing, and it moves easily into figure, as when borders are slammed shut.
- 2
- 3The sharp bang and jolt caused by closing a door or similar object with great force.
The slam of the screen door echoed across the yard.
Each slam of the locker shook the whole metal frame.
Note
The noun belongs to the door itself, and it is an old one. Charles Dickens, writing in 1836–37, pairs 'the slam and the scowl' as a single show of temper. It names the jolt and the bang together, and it is countable, so a house can echo with slams. The action behind it is the door-shutting verb.
- 4
- 5To hit with great force, using a tool or other implement.
In the final minute she managed to slam in a rebound with her stick for the winning goal.
The blacksmith slammed at the glowing iron until it began to flatten.
Similarsmash, hammer, pound, bash, whack
Note
Sports reporting's verb for a hard shot at goal: a player slams in a goal or a rebound. With in, the object can drop away entirely, as in 'slammed in his first for the club'. Headed in is the gentler partner in the same report. The force is in the shot, and the ball, the foot or the stick goes unnamed.
- 6To collide with something abruptly and with great force.
The car slammed into the guardrail at high speed.
Huge waves slam against the cliffs during winter storms.
Similarcrash, smash, plow, pound, bang
Note
News copy reaches for this one whenever vehicles collide: a train slams into a stationary vehicle, and a boat slams into a bank. Into is its natural partner. Although the verb usually takes no object, reports also make it passive: a fishing boat 'was slammed by' another vessel. That shape puts the victim of the collision first.
- 7To criticize harshly; to speak badly of.
Voters slam politicians who break their promises.
The senator slammed the proposal as reckless and short-sighted.
Similarcriticize, condemn, denounce, blast, bash
Note
The verb of headlines and press statements: critics slam a film, and union leaders slam new proposals. It is colloquial, so formal prose usually prefers criticize or condemn. Its opposites, back and support, show that it describes taking a public side, not private grumbling. A single remark of this kind is the 'insult' noun.
- 8To defeat or overcome an opponent in a match or contest.
Top seeds slam weaker sides early in the tournament.
The champions slammed their rivals in straight sets.
Similarbeat, crush, thrash, trounce, rout
Note
Sports-desk slang for a heavy win: the team slammed its opponents 6–0. The scoreline is the point. The verb suits a rout that shows dominance, not a narrow or hard-fought victory, where beat or edge would fit better. Despite the shared look, it belongs to the impact family, not to the card-table word behind the sporting Grand Slam.
- 9To force the basketball down through the rim with a powerful dunk.
The forward rose above the defense and slammed it home.
Players who can slam draw the biggest cheers.
Note
Basketball's shorthand for the slam dunk, clipped from the compound. Dunk alone can be gentle, but slam insists on force: the ball is driven down through the rim. Players slam, or slam the ball through, and the bare verb is enough on court. The same clipping gives the noun for the dunk itself.
- 10
- 11A pointed insult or cutting remark.
Her review contained more than one slam at the author's style.
The comedian's set was full of slams aimed at local politicians.
Similardig, swipe, jab, barb, insult
Oppositecompliment
Note
An American colloquialism with a long life. Joseph C. Lincoln's Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913) already has 'the least mite of a slam at Doctor Wool'. The usual construction is a slam at someone. Speakers often use the noun defensively, softening a criticism in advance with 'I don't mean this as a slam, but…'.
- 12The feat of winning every event in a year or season, or every major or designated one, sometimes with a single exception.
A calendar-year slam in golf has eluded even the best players.
By also taking the last race in October, the team made it a slam for the season.
Similarsweep
Note
The sweep usually appears in the compound grand slam, and well beyond tennis. American Motorcyclist in August 1955 used it for a rider who set the fastest time, won his heat and took the final. Anthony Pritchard's Grand Prix Ferrari (2014) imagines 'a Ferrari grand slam'. The 'all but one' allowance keeps the word flexible.
- 13One of the major championship tournaments that make up the yearly Grand Slam.
He had never won a slam until his late twenties.
The schedule packs all four slams into a single year.
Similarmajor
Note
Tennis talk shortens Grand Slam to slam and makes it countable: a player wins slams, counts slams, and enters the four slams of the year. Those four are the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. Winning all four in one season is a different feat, the one named by the clean-sweep noun.
- 14To overwhelm with a heavy workload; to keep extremely busy.
The holiday rush slammed every department in the store.
Back-to-back deadlines slam the design team each spring.
Similarswamp, overwhelm, inundate, flood
Note
Workplace American English, and nearly always passive: we were slammed all weekend. In that shape slammed works almost like an adjective. It names a state of overload rather than an action anyone performs. The active form, with the rush or the deadline as its subject, exists but is the less usual way to say it.
- 15
- 16To compete in a poetry slam, performing original work to be scored by judges or the audience.
Poets slam competitively at venues across the country.
He started slamming after seeing a televised competition.
- 17A live competition in which poets perform original work and receive scores from judges or the audience.
The monthly slam drew performers from across the region.
Regional slams have launched several spoken-word careers.
- 18In bridge, a bid of six (small slam) or seven (grand slam) in a chosen suit or in no trump.
The pair bid a small slam and collected all twelve tricks.
Their slam went down when the trumps split badly.
Note
Bridge sizes the contract: a small slam is a bid of six and a grand slam a bid of seven. In bridge counting, that means twelve tricks or all thirteen. Players bid a slam, make it, or go down in it, and making one earns a large bonus. The two adjectives are fixed: no player speaks of a large or a full slam.
- 19A card game played all at once without separate turns, in which players race to get rid of their cards as fast as the rules allow.
A round of slam can end in under a minute.
They taught the kids slam on the long drive home.
Similarspit
- 20To have sex with someone in a rough, forceful manner.
He boasted about slamming his girlfriend.
They slam each other roughly behind closed doors.
Note
Vulgar slang that carries over the force of the impact verbs, matched in register by its synonym rail. Tremz's 'Sketty Bums Get Wild' (2015) uses it in the passive, 'gettin' slammed'. That shape is the risk: being slammed also means being swamped with work, so the innocent phrase can misfire in company that knows the crude one.
- 21To strike someone hard enough to kill them or leave them unable to move for some time.
The gang threatened to slam anyone who talked to the police.
A single blow slammed the fighter unconscious for several minutes.
Similarknock, flatten, deck, floor
Note
Street slang with real menace. Tremz's 'Lightwork Freestyle' (2020) uses it beside being nicked and held on remand. Outside that world it is easily misheard, because everyday speech uses the same verb for collisions and for harsh criticism. Only context tells a threat from a complaint. Keep it out of neutral writing.
- 22To inject a drug directly into a vein.
Addicts sometimes slam several times a day.
She admitted to slamming the drug for years.
Similarinject, shoot, mainline
Note
Drug slang for injecting, used with or without an object: one slams a drug, or simply slams. James Wharton's Something for the Weekend (2017) uses the bare form, setting 'will never slam' beside refusing to try Tina as a line some users will not cross. Its slang partner is bang, and shoot up is the more familiar equivalent.
- 23A subgenre of death metal blended with hardcore punk, built around midtempo rhythms, breakdowns, and palm-muted riffs.
Their new album leans heavily into slam.
Fans of slam packed the small venue.
Note
A genre label, and uncountable: fans listen to slam, not to a slam. In full it is often called slamming brutal death metal. What sets it apart is weight over speed. The midtempo groove, the breakdown and the palm-muted riff, borrowed partly from hardcore punk, matter more here than sheer velocity.
- 24In card games, the winning or losing of all the tricks in a single game.
Their slam in the final hand sealed the match.
A slam doubles the points in this version of the game.
Note
The clean sweep of a card game cuts both ways: one side makes a slam, and the other suffers one. Whether it means triumph or disaster depends only on where you sit, so context must say who swept whom. The same feat seen as an action is the verb for sweeping opponents.
- 25To beat opponents at cards without allowing them a single trick in the hand or deal.
He slammed the visiting team without dropping a single trick.
If you play carefully, you can slam them and take the whole hand.
Similarsweep
Note
A whist-table verb: Edmond Hoyle uses it in A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742), where a player holding seven spades takes them all and so slams both opponents. Its object is the losing players, never the tricks themselves. Its origin is unknown, perhaps reinforced by the noisy, forceful slam, and chelem is its doublet. The slam bid promises in advance the sweep this verb records.
- 26In bridge, to make a slam bid: committing to a small slam (six) or grand slam (seven).
Holding two long suits, the pair chose to slam.
Good players slam only when the points clearly justify it.
Note
Intransitive in bridge talk: a pair slams, or stops short of slamming. The verb reports a decision in the auction, not the outcome of the play. A side that slams has only committed itself, and the contract can still go down once the cards are played.
- 27To switch a customer's service, such as telephone service, to a different provider without the customer's permission.
Regulators fined the carrier for slamming subscribers.
Some firms slam customers and then deny doing it.
Note
Telecommunications has a name for this fraud: slamming. A subscriber's service, typically long-distance telephone service, is switched to another carrier without authorization. Regulators in many jurisdictions punish it with fines. The object of the verb is the customer, not the line: a carrier slams subscribers, and a slammed customer is the one who complains.
- 28A notebook passed among friends, especially schoolchildren, for each to write comments, answers, or messages in.
Everyone scribbled secrets into the slam during lunch.
By June, the slam was full of inside jokes and signatures.
Note
Short for slambook, and at home in pen-pal culture. It circulates alongside friendship books, crams and decos, the handmade notebooks passed from one correspondent to the next. Mark Duffett's Fan Identities and Practices in Context (2017) lists slams among the variations on the friendship book.
- 29An old trick-taking card game, also known as ruff and honors.
The squire and his guests played slam late into the evening.
She learned slam from her grandmother before whist came into fashion.
Note
The card-table word is a different word from the slamming door. Its origin is unknown and long debated, though the impact verb may have reinforced it, and it is a doublet of chelem. This obsolete game, also called ruff and honors, now survives mainly in older writing. Living card senses such as the bridge bid keep the name.
- 30A clumsy, shuffling man: one who walks in a loose, ungainly way.
A gawky slam stumbled through the market and knocked over a basket of apples.
The innkeeper's son had grown into a lazy slam who dragged his feet everywhere.
Note
An obsolete label for a person, from a third, unrelated root: compare Dutch slomp and German Schlampe. It has no connection to the door or the card table. A slam in older writing that describes someone's gait or manner means a shambling fellow, not a blow or a sweep of tricks.
- 31Yellowish waste left over from making alum, made up of iron silicate.
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Origins
From an unrecorded Middle English *slammen, apparently from a Scandinavian source, ultimately from Old Norse slæma ("to slam, swing a weapon, strike an object out of reach"). It is related to forms like Norwegian slamre and Swedish slamra ("to pound, beat, rattle").
The origin is unknown and long debated, though it was perhaps reinforced by Etymology 1. It is a doublet of chelem.