Slam

How to spell slam

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slam

What does slam mean?

1. verbTo shut, throw, or strike something with great force and a loud noise.
2. verbTo criticise someone or something severely and publicly.
3. nounA sudden, loud bang made when something is shut or struck with force.

Slam in a sentence

• verb

  The wind made the back door slam against its frame.

• verb

  Reviewers were quick to slam the restaurant for its slow service.

• noun

  The loud slam of the front door woke the whole house.

• verb

  He tends to slam the car boot when he is in a hurry.

• verb

  The report did not hold back and went on to slam the council's spending.

• noun

  A single slam of the gate told her the visitor had left.

Where does slam come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Slam is a fairly young word in English, first recorded in the late 1600s, and it is widely thought to come from a Scandinavian source: compare the Norwegian dialect 'slemma' and Icelandic 'slamra', both meaning to bang or strike noisily. The word is partly imitative, meaning its sound mimics the loud, abrupt noise of a door or lid being shut hard, which is why it feels so blunt and percussive even today. From the literal sense of striking something with force, it broadened to mean throwing something down violently and, by the twentieth century, criticising someone harshly. In card games it gave us the 'grand slam', and in sport and poetry the same idea of a decisive, forceful win survives. Spelling it is rarely a problem because it follows the simplest English pattern, a short vowel framed by consonants, with nothing silent or doubled to trip the writer.

How the word is built

• slam (a single, unanalysable root of probably Scandinavian origin; no prefix or suffix)