different between seam vs splice

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

Circa 1525, borrowed from Middle Dutch splissen (Modern Dutch splitsen); akin to Middle Dutch splitten (“to split”), German spleißen (“to split, splice”), Spliss (“split ends, hair breakage”), French épisser (also from Dutch). The Dutch word originally referred only to the fraying of the ropes' ends, but was then also used for the entire process of fraying and retying; hence the peculiar semantic development from “split” to “join”.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /spla?s/
• Rhymes: -a?s

Noun

splice (plural splices)

1. (nautical) A junction or joining of ropes made by splicing them together.
2. (electrical) The electrical and mechanical connection between two pieces of wire or cable.
3. (cricket) That part of a bat where the handle joins the blade.
4. Bonding or joining of overlapping materials.
5. (genetics) The process of removing intron sequences from the pre-messenger RNA, and then joining together exons.

Hyponyms

• comma splice
• cut splice
• cunt splice
• eye splice

Related terms

Translations

Verb

splice (third-person singular simple present splices, present participle splicing, simple past and past participle spliced)

1. To unite, as two ropes, or parts of a rope, by a particular manner of interweaving the strands, -- the union being between two ends, or between an end and the body of a rope.
2. To unite, as spars, timbers, rails, etc., by lapping the two ends together, or by applying a piece which laps upon the two ends, and then binding, or in any way making fast.
3. (slang) To unite in marriage.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 3

     But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced.

4. (figuratively) To unite as if splicing.

   He argues against attempts to splice different genres or species of literature into a single composition.

5. (genetics) To remove intron sequences from the pre-messenger RNA, and then join together exons.

Related terms

• splice the mainbrace

Translations