Definition of "seam"

seam¹

/siːm/

noun
plural seams
1. (sewing) A folded-back and stitched piece of fabric; especially, the stitching that joins two or more pieces of fabric.
  Quotations
  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.
  1977, Agatha Christie, chapter 4, in An Autobiography, part II, London: Collins
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, nautical) 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. (figurative) A line of junction; a joint.
  Quotations
  Precepts should be so finely wrought together […] that no coarse seam may discover where they join.
  1697, Joseph Addison, Essay on Virgil's Georgics

seam²

/siːm/

verb
third-person singular simple present seams, present participle seaming, simple past and past participle seamed
1. To put together with a seam.
  Quotations
  Thus, seamed with many scars, / Bursting these prison bars, / Up to its native stars / My soul ascended!
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Skeleton in Armor
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.
  Quotations
  Seam'd o'er with wounds which his own sabre gave.
  1725–1726, Homer, “Book 4”, in [William Broome, Elijah Fenton, and Alexander Pope], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], London: […] Bernard Lintot
4. To crack open along a seam.
  Quotations
  Later their lips began to parch and seam.
  1880, Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
5. (cricket) Of the ball, to move sideways after bouncing on the seam.
6. (cricket) Of a bowler, to make the ball move thus.

seam³

/siːm/

noun
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.
  Quotations
  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.
  1952, L. F. Salzman, Building in England, page 175

seam⁴

/siːm/

noun
uncountable
1. (UK, dialect, obsolete) Grease; tallow; lard.
  Quotations
  shall the proud lord That bastes his arrogance with his own seam And never suffers matter of the world
  c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene iii]
  scour their rusty shields with seam
  1697, Virgil, “The Seventh Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]