Meaning & use
ram
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Meanings
nouncountable
A fully grown male sheep, often with large curled horns, kept to father lambs.
Grammar: Has a plural: the farmer keeps three rams.
The ram butted the fence when the farmer walked past.
In spring, a single ram can father dozens of lambs.
Rams use their curled horns to fight each other for dominance.
verbtransitive
To crash into something hard, or to push something forcefully into a space.
Grammar: Takes an object: ram the door.
Patterns
- ram into something
- ram something into something
The thief rammed the gate with a stolen truck.
A speedboat rammed into the dock.
She rammed her clothes into the suitcase and sat on the lid.
nouncountable
A heavy beam or machine used to smash open doors or walls.
Grammar: Often a battering ram; it is named after the ram's head-butting habit.
Patterns
- a ram for something
Police used a ram to break open the locked door.
Medieval soldiers carried a huge ram to the castle gate.
The firefighters brought a hydraulic ram to the collapsed wall.
Word forms
| plural | rams |
|---|---|
| third person singular | rams |
| past tense | rammed |
| past participle | rammed |
| -ing form | ramming |
Common combinations
- a breeding ram
- The farm paid a lot for a healthy breeding ram.
- a battering ram
- They broke in with a battering ram.
- ram a car
- The protester rammed a car into the barrier.
- ram home
- The coach rammed home the need for early practice.
- ram something down someone's throat
- Stop ramming your opinions down my throat.
Synonyms and how they differ
- tup
- Tup is mainly a British farming word for a ram and sounds more rural and technical.
- smash
- As a verb, smash stresses breaking something, while ram stresses driving into it with force.
- cram
- Cram means to fill a space too full, whereas ram pushes something in hard and does not always suggest overcrowding.
Opposites
Word family
- rammer noun
- a tool used to pack down earth or loose material
- ramming noun
- the act of crashing into something deliberately
Commonly confused: ram or goat? ram or RAM?
ram vs goat
A goat is a different animal from a sheep; a male goat is a billy or buck, not a ram.
ram vs RAM
RAM written in capitals means random access memory in a computer and has nothing to do with the animal.
Practice
A male sheep that is kept for breeding is called a ___.
Choose one answer.
A ram is the adult male sheep. A buck or billy is a male goat, and a ewe is a female sheep.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “ram”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.