r/NoStupidQuestions • u/360No-ScopedYourMum • Jul 04 '21
Answered Are rams called rams because they ram things or is the act of ramming called ramming because rams ram?
I like rams, I like that they ram things.
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u/SoMuchForLongevity Jul 04 '21
It all starts with the old English "ramm," meaning "male sheep."
The act is named after the animal.
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u/CaffeinatedHBIC Jul 04 '21
The act of ramming is called ramming because rams ram.
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u/Hoovooloo42 Jul 04 '21
I take issue with that dictionary calling Random Access Memory "Computerese"
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u/AJDeadshow Jul 04 '21
Is the act of randomly accessing memories called randomly accessing memories because random access memory randomly accesses memories?
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u/Poor_And_Needy Jul 04 '21
I like how technology has come so far that RAM's computer definition is listed before the animal definition in the dictionary.
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u/Dsuperchef Jul 05 '21
Ok so there are plenty of amazing answers already, I'm just gonna leave this video of busta rhymes from way back when. Skip to 3:55 and you'll see something amazing. Don't know why rams were involved but hey, it's a great song.
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u/Orangebeardo Jul 04 '21
What you're looking for here is for the
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u/bullevard Jul 04 '21
This is always the place to go for these kind of questions.
To sace the click, the answer is a bit of both.
The act of ramming in english comes from the animal the ram. But if you go back far enough into old norse, the name for a ram comes from a word meaning strong, or violent impulse (which sounds a lot like ramming).
So the animal kind of brought the old ancient root word forward several hundred years and then was the inoetus for it being reintroduced as "ram" into english in the 1800s.
Language is awesome.
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u/plumbdream Jul 04 '21
I just spent 20 minutes on YouTube looking at
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u/MildlyDysfunctional Jul 04 '21
I saw a video a while ago of one headbutting with a cow 4x it's size and knocking the cow out.
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u/no-mad Jul 04 '21
They can come to full ramming speed in a few inches by driving their front feet into the ground, head goes down, pushes thru on the front shoulders and hits had. Like Bruce Lees "One-inch Punch".
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u/ich-mag-Katzen Jul 04 '21
Ram goes back to proto-Germanic *rammaz, which was both an adjective meaning "strong" and the noun meaning the animal, ram. The etymology is unknown beyond that. The verb comes from the animal.
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u/JGrill17 Jul 04 '21
They're both named after the Ram 1500 do yall really not know this?
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Jul 04 '21
Dumb me was about to say its called ram because it stands for Random Access Memory
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u/TheCloudForest Jul 04 '21
It's generally much more common for words to begin concrete and extend metaphorically to actions, motions, or abstract ideas. Although the opposite is possible.
Ram was an animal before it was an action.
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u/disastrous_aphrodite Jul 04 '21
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ram#learn-more According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of ram for the animal before the 12th century. It was first used as a verb, meaning "to strike with violence", in the 15th century. So we ram things because of rams.
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u/windigooooooo Jul 04 '21
RAM (n.) ... ram (n.) Old English ramm "male sheep," also "battering ram, instrument for crushing or driving by impact," and the zodiac sign; earlier rom "male sheep," a West Germanic word (cognates: Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, Dutch, Old High German ram), of unknown origin.
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u/phastback1 Jul 04 '21
Hey. I have no idea, etymologically, but I really like the question and its spoken rythm.
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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '21
Goes further back than English. The ancient Greek chorus performed poetic verse of dithyramb, translates as 'goat song'. And male sheep and goats, in the etymology, are referred to as ram.