AM definition | Dictionary.com

am

[am; unstressed uh

m, m]

–verb

1st pers. sing. pres. indic. of be.

Origin:
before 900; ME; OE am, eam, eom; c. Goth im, ON, Armenian em, OIr am, Gk eimí, Hittite, early Lith esmi, OCS yesmĭ, Albanian jam, Skt asmi < IE *Hes- be + *-m 1st pers. sing. + *-i now; cf. is

AM

1.	Electronics. amplitude modulation: a method of impressing a signal on a radio carrier wave by varying its amplitude.

2.	Radio. a system of broadcasting by means of amplitude modulation.

3.	of, pertaining to, or utilizing such a system. Compare FM

4.	Asian male.

Origin:
1935–40

Am

Symbol, Chemistry.

americium.

Am.

America.

American.

A/m

ampere per meter.

A.M.

a.m.

2.	Master of Arts.

Origin:
< L Artium Magister

a.m.

1.	before noon.

2.	the period from midnight to noon, esp. the period of daylight prior to noon: Shall we meet Saturday a.m.?

3.	a morning newspaper, sometimes issued shortly before midnight.

Compare p.m.

Origin:
< L ante merīdiem

Usage note:
The abbreviation a.m. for Latin ante meridiem, meaning “before noon,” refers to the period from midnight until noon. One minute before noon is 11:59 a.m. One minute after noon is 12:01 p.m. Many people distinguish between noon and midnight by saying 12 noon and 12 midnight. Expressions combining a.m. with morning (6 a.m. in the morning) and p.m. with afternoon, evening, or night (9 p.m. at night) are redundant and occur most often in casual speech and writing. Both a.m. and p.m. sometimes appear in capital letters, especially in printed matter.

be

[bee; unstressed bee, bi]

verb and auxiliary verb, present singular 1st person am, 2nd are or (Archaic

) art, 3rd is, present plural are; past singular 1st person was, 2nd were or (Archaic

) wast or wert, 3rd was, past plural were; present subjunctive be; past subjunctive singular 1st person were, 2nd were or (Archaic

) wert, 3rd were; past subjunctive plural were; past participle been; present participle be⋅ing.

–verb (used without object)

1.	to exist or live: Shakespeare's “To be or not to be” is the ultimate question.

2.	to take place; happen; occur: The wedding was last week.

3.	to occupy a place or position: The book is on the table.

4.	to continue or remain as before: Let things be.

5.	to belong; attend; befall: May good fortune be with you.

6.	(used as a copula to connect the subject with its predicate adjective, or predicate nominative, in order to describe, identify, or amplify the subject): Martha is tall. John is president. This is she.

7.	(used as a copula to introduce or form interrogative or imperative sentences): Is that right? Be quiet! Don't be facetious.

–auxiliary verb

8.	(used with the present participle of another verb to form the progressive tense): I am waiting.

9.	(used with the present participle or infinitive of the principal verb to indicate future action): She is visiting there next week. He is to see me today.

10.	(used with the past participle of another verb to form the passive voice): The date was fixed. It must be done.

11.	(used in archaic or literary constructions with some intransitive verbs to form the perfect tense): He is come. Agamemnon to the wars is gone.

Origin:
bef. 900; ME been, OE bēon (bēo- (akin to OFris, OHG bim, G bin, OS bium, biom (I) am, OE, OHG, OS būan, ON būa reside, L fuī (I) have been, Gk phy- grow, become, OIr boí (he) was, Skt bhávati (he) becomes, is, Lith búti to be, OCS byti, Pers būd was)) + -n inf. suffix. See am, is, are ¹ , was, were

Usage note:
See me.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source

Link To AM

am (ām)

v. First person singular present indicative of be.

[Middle English, from Old English eom; see es- in Indo-European roots.]

Am¹
The symbol for the element americium.

Am²
abbr. Bible
Amos

AM
abbr.

amplitude modulation
Latin artium magister (Master of Arts)

am·er·i·ci·um (ām'ə-rĭsh'ē-əm)

n. Symbol Am
A white metallic transuranic element of the actinide series, having isotopes with mass numbers from 237 to 246 and half-lives from 25 minutes to 7,950 years. Its longest-lived isotopes, Am 241 and Am 243, are alpha-ray emitters used as radiation sources in research. Atomic number 95; specific gravity 11.7; valence 3, 4, 5, 6. See Table at element.

[After America.]

A·mos² (ā'məs)

n. Abbr. Am
See Table at Bible.

[After Amos¹.]

amplitude modulation
n. Abbr. AM

The encoding of a carrier wave by variation of its amplitude in accordance with an input signal.
A broadcast system that uses amplitude modulation.

be (bē)

v. First and third person singular past indicative was (wŭz, wŏz; wəz when unstressed), second person singular and plural and first and third person plural past indicative were (wûr), past subjunctive were, past participle been (bĭn), present participle be·ing (bē'ĭng), first person singular present indicative am (ām), second person singular and plural and first and third person plural present indicative are (är), third person singular present indicative is (ĭz), present subjunctive be

v. intr.

To exist in actuality; have life or reality: I think, therefore I am.
1. To occupy a specified position: The food is on the table.
2. To remain in a certain state or situation undisturbed, untouched, or unmolested: Let the children be.
3. To equal in identity: "To be a Christian was to be a Roman" (James Bryce).
4. To have a specified significance: A is excellent, C is passing. Let n be the unknown quantity.
5. To belong to a specified class or group: The human being is a primate.
6. To have or show a specified quality or characteristic: She is witty. All humans are mortal.
7. To seem to consist or be made of: The yard is all snow. He is all bluff and no bite.
To take place; occur: The test was yesterday.
To go or come: Have you ever been to Italy? Have you been home recently?
Used as a copula in such senses as:
1. To equal in identity: "To be a Christian was to be a Roman" (James Bryce).
2. To have a specified significance: A is excellent, C is passing. Let n be the unknown quantity.
3. To belong to a specified class or group: The human being is a primate.
4. To have or show a specified quality or characteristic: She is witty. All humans are mortal.
5. To seem to consist or be made of: The yard is all snow. He is all bluff and no bite.
To belong; befall: Peace be unto you. Woe is me.

v. aux.

Used with the past participle of a transitive verb to form the passive voice: The mayoral election is held annually.
Used with the present participle of a verb to express a continuing action: We are working to improve housing conditions.
Used with the infinitive of a verb to express intention, obligation, or future action: She was to call before she left. You are to make the necessary changes.
Archaic Used with the past participle of certain intransitive verbs to form the perfect tense: "Where be those roses gone which sweetened so our eyes?" (Philip Sidney).

[Middle English ben, from Old English bēon; see bheuə- in Indo-European roots. See am¹, is, etc. for links to other Indo-European roots.]

Usage Note: Traditional grammar requires the nominative form of the pronoun in the predicate of the verb be: It is I (not me); That must be they (not them), and so forth. Nearly every speaker of Modern English finds this rule difficult to follow. Even if everyone could follow it, in informal contexts the nominative pronoun often sounds pedantic and even ridiculous, especially when the verb is contracted, as in It's we. But constructions like It is me have been condemned in the classroom and in writing handbooks for so long that there seems little likelihood that they will ever be entirely acceptable in formal writing. · The traditional rule creates additional problems when the pronoun following be also functions as the object of a verb or preposition in a relative clause, as in It is not them/they that we have in mind when we talk about "crime in the streets" nowadays, where the plural pronoun serves as both the predicate of is and the object of have. In this example, 57 percent of the Usage Panel prefers the nominative form they, 33 percent prefer the objective them, and 10 percent accept both versions. Writers can usually revise their sentences to avoid this problem: They are not the ones we have in mind, We have someone else in mind, and so on. See Usage Notes at I¹, we.

Our Living Language : In place of the inflected forms of be, such as is and are, used in Standard English, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and some varieties of Southern American English may use zero copula or an invariant be, as in He be working, instead of the Standard English He is usually working. As an identifying feature of the vernacular of many African Americans, invariant be in recent years has been frequently seized on by writers and commentators trying to imitate or parody Black speech. However, most imitators use it simply as a substitute for is, as in John be sitting in that chair now, without realizing that within AAVE, invariant be is used primarily for habitual or extended actions set in the present. Among African Americans the form is most commonly used by working-class speakers and young persons. Since the 1980s, younger speakers have tended to restrict the use of the form to progressive verb forms (as in He be walking), whereas their parents use it with progressives, adjectives (as in He be nice), and expressions referring to a location (as in He be at home). Younger speakers also use invariant be more exclusively to indicate habitual action, whereas older speakers more commonly omit be forms (as in He walking) or use present tense verb forms (such as He walks), sometimes with adverbs like often or usually, to indicate habituality. · The source of invariant habitual be in AAVE is still disputed. Some linguists suggest that it represents influence from finite be in the 17th- to 19th-century English of British settlers, especially those from the southwest of England. Other linguists feel that contemporaneous Irish or Scotch-Irish immigrants may have played a larger role, since their dialects mark habitual verb forms with be and do be, as in "They be shooting and fishing out at the Forestry Lakes" (archival recordings of the Royal Irish Academy) and "Up half the night he does be" (James Joyce). Other linguists believe that it may have evolved from the does be construction indicating habitual action used by Gullah speakers from coastal South Carolina and Georgia and by Caribbean Creole immigants. Still other linguists suggest that invariant be is a mid- to late-20th-century innovation within AAVE, essentially a response to the wide range of meanings that the English progressive tense can express. See Notes at all, like², zero copula.

Am\ [AS. am, eom, akin to Gothic im, Icel. em, Olr. am, Lith. esmi, L. sum., Gr. ?, Zend ahmi, Skr. asmi, fr. a root as to be. ?. See Are, and cf. Be, Was.] The first person singular of the verb be, in the indicative mode, present tense. See Be.

God said unto Moses, I am that am. --Exod. iii. 14.

Language Translation for : AM

Spanish: de la mañana,

German: vor mittags,

Japanese: 午前

More Translations »

O.E. eom "to remain," (Mercian eam, Northumbrian am), from PIE *esmi- (cf. O.N. emi, Goth. im, Hittite esmi, O.C.S. jesmi, Lith. esmi), from base *es-, *s-, the S-ROOT, which also yielded Gk. esti-, L. est, Skt. as-, and Ger. ist. In O.E. it existed only in present tense, all other forms being expressed in the W-BASE (see were, was). This cooperative verb is sometimes referred to by linguists as *es-*wes-. Until the distinction broke down 13c., *es-*wes- tended to express "existence," with beon meaning something closer to "come to be" (see be). O.E. am had two plural forms: sind/sindon, sie and earon/aron The s- form (also used in the subjunctive) fell from use in the early 13c. (though it continues in Ger. sind, the 3rd person plural of "to be") and was replaced by forms of be, but aron (aren, arn, are, from P.Gmc. *ar-, probably a variant of PIE base *es-) continued and encroached on some uses that had previously belonged to be as the two verbs merged. By the early 1500s it had established its place in standard Eng. Art became archaic in the 1800s.

Main Entry: Am
Function: symbol
americium

Main Entry: AM
Function: abbreviation
1 [Latin ante meridiem] before noon
2 [Medieval Latin Artium Magister] masterof arts

Am
The symbol for the element americium.

Am
The symbol for americium.

AM
Abbreviation of amplitude modulation

AM
1. Amplitude Modulation.
2. A program by Doug Lenat to discover concepts in elementary mathematics. AM was written in 1976 in Interlisp. From 100 fundamental concepts and about 250 heuristics it discovered several important mathematical concepts including subsets, disjoint sets, sets with the same number of elements, and numbers. It worked by filling slots in frames maintaining an agenda of resource-limited prioritised tasks.
AM's successor was Eurisko.
(http://homepages.enterprise.net/hibou/aicourse/lenat.txt).
(1999-04-19)

am networking
The country code for Armenia.
Used for the vanity domain "i.am".
(1999-01-27)

Amharic
ammeter

americium
Amos

amplitude modulation
Latin Artium Magister (Master of Arts)
Asian male

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