the.com/ham
pork that learned salt, smoke, and time can defeat death itself
means The salted, cured, and often smoked meat from the hind leg or thigh of a pig.
from From Old English 'hamm,' which originally meant the hollow or bend behind the knee — the back of the thigh on a person. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic root tied to the idea of being crooked or bent (a likely cousin of words for 'hollow' and 'crooked'). Over time the word slid down the leg, so to speak, from the human knee-bend to the pig's thigh, and from there to the cured meat we now name it for. The unrelated 'ham' meaning a show-off actor is a separate tale entirely.
- name origin
- comes from Old English hamm, meaning bend of the knee
- aged years
- Spanish jamon ibérico cures up to four years
- radio slang
- amateur radio operators called hams since the 1900s
- easter staple
- outsells turkey for American Easter dinners
- actor insult
- hammy overacting may stem from minstrel ham-fat makeup
smithfield ham — cured pork from smithfield, virginia, protected designation since 1926
prosciutto di parma — italian dry-cured ham from parma region, pdo protected since 1998