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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

cram.

To press, force, or drive, particularly in filling, or in thrusting one thing into another; to stuff; to fill to superfluity.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/kɹæm/Received-Pronunciation/kɹam/British, Midlands, Northern-England, Southern, Standard/kɾam/Scotland, Wales/kɹæm/
  1. To press, force, or drive, particularly in filling, or in thrusting one thing into another; to stuff; to fill to superfluity.

    transitive
    to cram fruit into a basket; to cram a room with people
    But you still need to check in with the Arch Linux community now and then to make sure that none of their crazy shit is going to be crammed down your throat the next update.
  2. To fill with food to satiety; to stuff.

    transitive
    The boy crammed himself with cake
  3. To put hastily through an extensive course of memorizing or study, as in preparation for an examination.

    transitive
    A pupil is crammed by his tutor.
  4. To study hard; to swot.

    intransitive
  5. To eat greedily, and to satiety; to stuff oneself.

    intransitive
  6. To lie; to intentionally not tell the truth.

    British · dated · intransitive · slang
  7. To make (a person) believe false or exaggerated tales.

    British · dated · slang · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English crammen, from Old English crammian (“to cram; stuff”), from Proto-West Germanic *krammōn, from Proto-Germanic *krammōną, a secondary verb derived from *krimmaną (“to stuff”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to assemble; collect; gather”). Compare Old English crimman (“to cram; stuff; insert; press; bruise”), Icelandic kremja (“to squeeze; crush; bruise”).

noun/kɹæm/Received-Pronunciation/kɹam/British, Midlands, Northern-England, Southern, Standard/kɾam/Scotland, Wales/kɹæm/
  1. The act of cramming (forcing or stuffing something).

    countable · uncountable
  2. Information hastily memorized.

    countable · dated · slang · uncountable
    a cram from an examination
  3. A warp having more than two threads passing through each dent or split of the reed.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A lie; a falsehood.

    British · countable · dated · slang · uncountable
  5. A mathematical board game in which players take turns placing dominoes horizontally or vertically until no more can be placed, the loser being the player who cannot continue.

    uncountable
  6. A small friendship book with limited space for people to enter their information.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English crammen, from Old English crammian (“to cram; stuff”), from Proto-West Germanic *krammōn, from Proto-Germanic *krammōną, a secondary verb derived from *krimmaną (“to stuff”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to assemble; collect; gather”). Compare Old English crimman (“to cram; stuff; insert; press; bruise”), Icelandic kremja (“to squeeze; crush; bruise”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.