ram-jam

English

Verb

ram-jam (third-person singular simple present ram-jams, present participle ram-jamming, simple past and past participle ram-jammed)

1. To roughly force into a small space or difficult position.
   • 1913, Farm Equipment Dealer - Volume 11, page 326:

     Carburetors, too, are poorly built to stand the racket and ram-jamming they meet.

   • 1988, Lloyd Pye Lloyd Pye, Mismatch, →ISBN, page 134:

     Marsh went on as his prisoner drank. "Because you're caught in the middle of my alternate plan, Ram-Jam, which ram-jams your ass between the rockiest rock and the hardest hard place you ever imagined.

   • 2004, David Allen Goodwin, No Matter What: Never Say Die, →ISBN, page 100:

     Unlike cattle going to market, there was no ram-jamming them up a shoot and hauling them off to market where prices were usually poor to bad.

   • 2011, Hal Howard, Truckin’ With Bubba ... and I Ain’t Bubba, →ISBN, page 7:

     As we approached the consignee where we were going to drop the trailer, he was ram-jamming the shifting lever and raking the gears trying to shift without using the clutch, and cursing as if it were the truck's fault he couldn't do it.

2. To travel about with no fixed destination.
   • 1909, Around the World with Taft:

     A grand duke, or a lesser titled personage, in a car goes ram-jamming over Moscow at 40 miles an hour up, with no one to say him nay.

   • 2013, Penelope Williamson, Heart of the West, →ISBN, page 188:

     This place might be work, but it sure beats ram-jamming around just for beans.

   • 2017, Elise Levine, Blue Field, →ISBN, page 77:

     She planted her legs widely beneath her, beside her rig lashed to the hull with bungee cords—which she could hardly see in the explosion of sun off the white deck of the ram-jamming boat.

Noun

ram-jam (plural ram-jams)

1. A forceful poke or shove.
   • 1902, The Epworth Herald - Volume 13, page 535:

     A fake pass contributed five more, and ram-jams at center and savage jabs at tackle netted ten.

   • 1910, Iowa. Reformatory at Anamosa, The Reformatory Press - Volume 13:

     Era Elbertus tells us, "Indulge an automobile appetite with a push-cart income, and it's you for the ram-jams and stripes."

   • 2007, United States. National Park Service, Historic Resource Study: Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, August 2007:

     An' a ram-jam now Git alon, Old Bones!

2. A person who forces his or her way around.
   • 1947, Malcolm Elwin, The Pleasure Ground: A Miscellany of English Writing, page 247:

     Now, thank goodness, we have broken away to acclaim actors who, without reverting to strut and bellow, are playing with a heartening drive and a mingling of subtlety and power ; who give to our stage its proper flash, its kindling glow ; and who make of the theatre more than a home for the "gilded gear," the rowdier ram-jams, and the "dim, moon-eyed fishes" that stare at them decorously.