ammo

Clipping of ammunition +‎ -o.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈæ.moʊ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æməʊ

ammo (usually uncountable, plural ammos)

1. (informal) Ammunition.
   • 1917, Arthur Guy Empey, “Lewis Gun”, in Over the Top, G. P. Putnam's, page 297:

     Under fire when this magazine is emptied you shout for “ammo” but perhaps No. 2, the ammo carrier, is lying in the rear with a bullet through his napper. Then it's “napoo-fini” (Tommy's French) for Mr. Lewis.

   • 2011, Mark Brannon, Tom Hanrahan, Shooting Sporting Clays, page 39:

     As with handguns and rifles, some ammos are more accurate than others.

2. (slang, games, gambling, uncommon) Chips or money, usually at a casino.

ammo (third-person singular simple present ammos, present participle ammoing, simple past and past participle ammoed)

1. (transitive, informal) To load up on ammunition.

   Synonym: ammo up

   • 2001, H. Beam Piper, Uller Uprising:

     "Harry and Hassan are getting the car re-ammoed; they dropped me off here.

• “ammo n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present

• Mamo, MoMA, OMAM, mamo

From Proto-Finnic *ammo, from Proto-Uralic *aŋmɜ-. Cognate to Ingrian ammillaa, Votic ammulla, Estonian ammuli, Estonian ammu, Livonian amtlõ (“to yawn”), Skolt Sami ämmsõddâd (“to yawn”), Western Mari (omeštaš, “to talk or move while in sleep or to talk unclearly”), Southern Selkup (āmmu-, “yawnable, something that makes one to yawn”) (Ket), Kamassian (a’moi-, “yawnable, something that makes one to yawn”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɑmːo/,
• Rhymes: -ɑmːo
• Hyphenation^(key): am‧mo

ammo (dialectal, rare)

1. something that widens on a mouth section, like a mouth or a cavity

• Junttila, Santeri, Kallio, Petri, Holopainen, Sampsa, Kuokkala, Juha, Pystynen, Juho, editors (2020–), “ammo”, in Suomen vanhimman sanaston etymologinen verkkosanakirja‎ (in Finnish), retrieved 2024-01-01
• “ammuli”, in Eesti etümoloogiasõnaraamat [Estonian Etymological Dictionary] (in Estonian) (online version), Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus (Estonian Language Foundation), 2012
• Itkonen, Erkki, Kulonen, Ulla-Maija, editors (1992–2000), Suomen sanojen alkuperä [The origin of Finnish words]‎ (in Finnish) (online version; note: also includes other etymological sources; this source is labeled "SSA 1992–2000"), Helsinki: Institute for the Languages of Finland/Finnish Literature Society, →ISBN
• Koponen, Eino, Ruppel, Klaas, Aapala, Kirsti, editors (2002–2008), Álgu database: Etymological database of the Saami languages‎, Helsinki: Research Institute for the Languages of Finland

Borrowed from Arabic أَمَّا (ʔammā, “as for”).

ammo

1. but