Ram

(răm.) [A. S.] (Zool.) The un castrated male of the sheep or ovine genus.-(Ast.) See ARIES.-(Nav.) An instrument of modern warfare, reproducing, on a vastly more powerful scale, the beaked ve els of the ancients. The ram is a ship of extraordinary solidity and strength, propelled by engines of great power, and armed at the prow, below the water-line, with a sharp heavy beak, nearly pointed, and diminishing to a sloping edge on the upper side. The first practical use of the modern iron-clad ram was in 1862, in Hampton Roads, where the Confederate ram Merrimac destroyed several Federal wooden ve els with the greatest ease. [s. 753]