pam

EnglishEdit

PronunciationEdit

IPA^(key): /pæm/
Audio (RP)
(file)

Etymology 1Edit

Probably short for French Pamphile (“a given name”), special use of man's name.

NounEdit

pam (countable and uncountable, plural pams)

The jack of clubs in loo played with hands of 5 cards.
A card game, similar to napoleon, in which the jack of clubs is the highest trump.

Etymology 2Edit

Probably alteration of panorama.

NounEdit

pam (plural pams)

(dated, photography) A panorama.
- 1934, Frank Roy Fraprie, American Photography (volume 28, page 240)
  The tripod used on a pam prevents any of that disturbing vertical shake which is so obvious in hand-held slow pams.

VerbEdit

pam (third-person singular simple present pams, present participle pamming, simple past and past participle pammed)

(dated, photography) To pan a camera in order to show a panorama.
- 1918, Edward Jewitt Wheeler, Frank Crane, Current Opinion - Volume 64, page 331:
  In this case the field was laid out in segments, and after the camera had been pammed about ten degrees it was stopped and the whole outfit moved over into the next segment, and so on round for ninety degrees;
- 1918, Rob Wagner, Film Folk:
  The camera man, in turn, when he had filmed the accident, pammed — the outrageous word "pam" means panorama — immediately to the sheriff in the hope that he would shoot.
- 1921, Arthur Benjamin Reeve, The Film Mystery, page 347:
  At one time he ordered a panorama effect, in which the cameras “pammed,” swept from one side to the other, giving a succession of faces at close range.
- 1925, Bell Laboratories Record - Volumes 1-2:
  The mechanism for taking the pictures with these markers on the original film and record can not be operated in quite so simple a manner, since the camera must be left free to be “pammed"—that is, moved about on its tripod to change the field of view.
- 1932, Educational Screen - Volumes 11-12, page 141:
  The institution is "pammed" from a nearby hill-top, followed by close-ups of the various buildings.
- 1947, The SAE Journal - Volume 55, page 46:
  This equipment has a distance range of 12,000 feet, and a height range of 750 feet and b, one camera is located 1500 feet from the runway and is "pammed" to follow the airplane.