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What is a "gammon"?

Posted By: Phil Simborg
Date: Tuesday, 6 September 2011, at 12:27 p.m.

Word of the Day for Tuesday, September 6, 2011 gammon \GAM-uhn\, verb:

1. To deceive. noun:

1. In backgammon, a victory in which the winner throws off all his or her pieces before the opponent throws off any.

verb:

1. To win a gammon (in the game of backgammon) over.

noun: 1. A smoked or cured ham.

2. Deceitful nonsense.

"Come," said Perrot to Luned, stopping short; "we will gammon him with a silver bit or so." -- Ernest Rhys, The whistling maid: A romance It is all very well for preachers and philosophers to try to gammon people into making the best of a bad lot; but there is a sort of poverty which does nothing but degrade. -- Justin McCarthy, My enemy's daughter: A novel This sense of gammon owes its meaning to the Middle English gamen, the ancestor of the Modern English "game."