[f. prec. verb.]
1. A mass of dough or paste used for cramming fowls, etc.; any food used to fatten. dial.
1614. Markham, Cheap Husb. (1623), 141. To cram a Capon … take Barley-meale … and … make it into a good stiffe dough; then make it into long crams, biggest in the midst, and small at both endes, and … give the Capon a full gorgefull.
1747. Gentl. Mag., Jan., 18. Mix up two quarts of flour, four ounces of Jamaica Pepper, [etc.] … to the consistence of Crams.
1750. W. Ellis, Mod. Husbandman, III. I. 99. Receipt for making Crams [for calves].
2. A crammed or densely crowded condition or party; a dense crowd, crush, ‘squeeze.’ colloq.
1858. Dickens, Lett., 5 Aug. It was a prodigious cram, and we turned away no end of people.
1881. Ethel Coxon, A Basil Plant, I. 77. A cram like the Fields’ can’t be pleasant.
3. slang. A lie. (Cf. CRAM v. 5.)
1842. Punch, II. 21/2 (Farmer). It soundeth somewhat like a cram.
1886. B. Gould, Crt. Royal, I. xvi. 244. Master … believes all the crams we tell.
4. The action of cramming information for a temporary occasion (see CRAM v. 6); the information thus hastily and temporarily acquired.
1853. ‘C. Bede,’ Verdant Green, II. 98. Going into the school clad in his examination coat, and padded over with a host of crams [cf. Cram-paper in next].
1859. Mill, Liberty, ii. 81. The … temptation of contenting himself with cram.
1860. Sat. Rev., IX. 308/1. He has not only crammed, but he has thoroughly digested and assimilated the cram.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., xi. (1889), 94. If capacity for taking in cram would do it, he would be all right.
1874. Blackie, Self-Cult., 27. Cram is a mere mechanical operation, of which a reasoning animal should be ashamed.
b. = CRAMMER 2.
1861. Dutton Cook, Paul Foster’s Daughter, ix. (Farmer). I shall go to a coach, a cram, a grindstone.
5. Weaving. ‘A warp having more than two threads passing through each dent or split of the reed’ (Webster, 1864).
