Definition of "yam"

yam¹

/jæm/

noun
plural yams
1. Any climbing vine of the genus Dioscorea in the Eastern and Western hemispheres, usually cultivated.
2. The edible, starchy, tuberous root of that plant, a tropical staple food.
  Quotations
  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.
  1958, Chinua Achebe, chapter 4, in Things Fall Apart, New York: Astor-Honor, published 1959, part 1, page 34
3. (US) A sweet potato; a tuber from the species Ipomoea batatas.
4. (Scotland) A potato.
5. (New Zealand) A oca; a tuber from the species Oxalis tuberosa.
6. (Malaysia, Singapore) Taro.
7. An orange-brown colour, like the flesh of the yam.

yam²

/jæm/

noun
plural yams
1. (regional, Cumberland) Home.

yam³

/jæm/

verb
1. Pronunciation spelling of am.
  Quotations
  “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.”
  1904, Carrie Hunt Latta, “The Last Day of Schol”, in The Reader Magazine‎, volume IV, Indianopolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, page 291

yam⁴

/jæm/

verb
third-person singular simple present yams, present participle yamming, simple past and past participle yammed
1. (UK, nonstandard, slang) To eat.
  Quotations
  “If I was that snake I’d just open my jaw and yam that fool up in one bite!”
  2016, Zadie Smith, Swing Time, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, page 78

yam⁵

/jæm/

verb
third-person singular simple present yams, present participle yamming, simple past and past participle yammed
1. (especially basketball) To dunk on; to beat humiliatingly.