different between seam vs pucker

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /si?m/
• Homophones: seem, seme
• Rhymes: -i?m

Etymology 1

From Middle English seem, seme, from Old English s?am (“seam”), from Proto-West Germanic *saum, from Proto-Germanic *saumaz (“that which is sewn”).

Alternative forms

• seme (obsolete)

Noun

seam (plural seams)

1. (sewing) A folded-back and stitched piece of fabric; especially, the stitching that joins two or more pieces of fabric.

   • Mind you, clothes were clothes in those days. […]  Frills, ruffles, flounces, lace, complicated seams and gores: not only did they sweep the ground and have to be held up in one hand elegantly as you walked along, but they had little capes or coats or feather boas.

2. A suture.
3. (geology) A thin stratum, especially of an economically viable material such as coal or mineral.
4. (cricket) The stitched equatorial seam of a cricket ball; the sideways movement of a ball when it bounces on the seam.
5. (construction) A joint formed by mating two separate sections of materials.

6. A line or depression left by a cut or wound; a scar; a cicatrix.
7. (figuratively) A line of junction; a joint.
   • 1697, Joseph Addison, Essay on Virgil's Georgics

     Precepts should be so finely wrought together […] that no coarse seam may discover where they join.

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

From the noun seam.

Verb

seam (third-person singular simple present seams, present participle seaming, simple past and past participle seamed)

1. To put together with a seam.
2. To make the appearance of a seam in, as in knitting a stocking; hence, to knit with a certain stitch, like that in such knitting.
3. To mark with a seam or line; to scar.
4. To crack open along a seam.
   • 1880, Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

     Later their lips began to parch and seam.

5. (cricket) Of the ball, to move sideways after bouncing on the seam.
6. (cricket) Of a bowler, to make the ball move thus.

Quotations

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Skeleton in Armor:

  Thus, seamed with many scars, / Bursting these prison bars, / Up to its native stars / My soul ascended!

Etymology 3

From Old English s?am (“a burden”), from Latin sagma (“saddle”).

Noun

seam (plural seams)

1. (historical) An old English measure of grain, containing eight bushels.
2. (historical) An old English measure of glass, containing twenty-four weys of five pounds, or 120 pounds.
   • 1952, L. F. Salzman, Building in England, p. 175.

     As white glass was 6s. the 'seam', containing 24 'weys' (pise, or pondera) of 5 lb., and 2½ lb. was reckoned sufficient to make one foot of glazing, the cost of glass would be 1½d. leaving 2½d. for labour.

Etymology 4

From Middle English seime (“grease”), from Old French saim (“fat”). Compare French saindoux (“lard”).

Noun

seam (plural seams)

1. (Britain, dialect, obsolete) grease; tallow; lard

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

Further reading

• seam on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• seam (sewing) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• AMEs, ASME, Ames, MSAE, Mesa, Same, eams, mase, meas, meas., mesa, same

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *saum, from Proto-Germanic *saumaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sæ???m/

Noun

s?am m (nominative plural s?amas)

1. seam

Declension

Derived terms

• s?amere
• s?amestre

Descendants

• Middle English: seme, seem
  • English: seam

English

Etymology

Probable alteration of poke (verb, or the noun meaning "a small bag").

Verb

pucker (third-person singular simple present puckers, present participle puckering, simple past and past participle puckered)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To pinch or wrinkle; to squeeze inwardly, to dimple or fold.
   • 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Crooked Man".

     He had a very dark, fearsome face, and a gleam in his eyes that comes back to me in my dreams. His hair and whiskers were shot with gray, and his face was all crinkled and puckered like a withered apple.

   • 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, Chapter 13.

     The conduct of the white strangers it was that caused him the greatest perturbation. He puckered his brows into a frown of deep thought.

Derived terms

• pucker up

Translations

Noun

pucker (plural puckers)

1. A fold or wrinkle.
   • 1921, Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow, Chapter 3.

     The mouth was compressed, and on either side of it two tiny wrinkles had formed themselves in her cheeks. An infinity of slightly malicious amusement lurked in those little folds, in the puckers about the half-closed eyes, in the eyes themselves, bright and laughing between the narrowed lids.

2. (colloquial) A state of perplexity or anxiety; confusion; bother; agitation.
   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd.

     What a pucker everything is in!" said Bathsheba, discontentedly when the child had gone. "Get away, Maryann, or go on with your scrubbing, or do something! You ought to be married by this time, and not here troubling me!"

Translations