Dam
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(1): ( v. t.) To shut up; to stop up; to close; to restrain.
(2): ( v. t.) To obstruct or restrain the flow of, by a dam; to confine by constructing a dam, as a stream of water; - generally used with in or up.
(3): ( n.) A firebrick wall, or a stone, which forms the front of the hearth of a blast furnace.
(4): ( n.) A female parent; - used of beasts, especially of quadrupeds; sometimes applied in contempt to a human mother.
(5): ( n.) A kind or crowned piece in the game of draughts.
(6): ( n.) A barrier to prevent the flow of a liquid; esp., a bank of earth, or wall of any kind, as of masonry or wood, built across a water course, to confine and keep back flowing water.
King James Dictionary [2]
DAM, n.
1. A female parent used of beasts, particularly of quadrupeds. 2. A human mother, in contempt. 3. A crowned man in the game of draughts.
DAM, n. A mole, bank or mound of earth, or any wall, or a frame of wood, raised to obstruct a current of water, and to raise it, for the purpose of driving millwheels, or for other purposes. Any work that stops and confines water in a pond or bason, or causes it to rise.
DAM,
1. To make a dam, or to stop a stream of water by a bank of earth, or by any other work to confine or shut in water. It is common to use, after the verb, in, up, or out as, to dam in, or to dam up, the water, and to dam out is to prevent water from entering. 2. To confine or restrain from escaping to shut in.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia [3]
(אם , 'ēm , ordinary Hebrew word for "mother"): Hebrew law prohibited the destruction of the "dam" and the young of birds at the same time, commanding that if the young be taken from a nest the dam be allowed to escape ( Deuteronomy 22:6 , Deuteronomy 22:7 ). In the same spirit it enjoined the taking of an animal for slaughter before it had been seven days with its "dam" ( Exodus 22:30; Leviticus 22:27; compare Exodus 23:19 ).
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [4]
( אֵם , Mother ), the female parent of young birds ( Deuteronomy 22:6-7), or lambs ( Exodus 22:30; Leviticus 22:27). With the Mosaic regulations of merciful treatment toward these creatures spoken of in these passages, compare the similar ordinance respecting boiling a kid in its own mother's milk ( Exodus 23:19), and the treatise of Heumann, De Legis Paradoxe (Gott. 1748, and in his Syllog. Diss . 2; 282 sq.). (See Beast).
