ammo

Clipping of ammunition +‎ -o.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈæ.məʊ/, /ˈa.məʊ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈæ.moʊ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æməʊ

ammo (usually uncountable, plural ammos)

1. (informal) Ammunition.
   • 1917, Arthur Guy Empey, “Lewis Gun”, in Over the Top, G. P. Putnam's, page 297:

     Under fire when this magazine is emptied you shout for “ammo” but perhaps No. 2, the ammo carrier, is lying in the rear with a bullet through his napper. Then it's “napoo-fini” (Tommy's French) for Mr. Lewis.

   • 1995, Paul Vautin, Turn It Up!, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, page 110:

     We walked onto the racecourse like a pair of Wyatt Earps, cashed up and plenty of ammo and we walked off like a pair of Elmer Fudds, out of `buwwets'.

   • 2011, Mark Brannon, Tom Hanrahan, Shooting Sporting Clays, page 39:

     As with handguns and rifles, some ammos are more accurate than others.

2. (slang, games, gambling, uncommon) Chips or money, usually at a casino.

ammo (third-person singular simple present ammos, present participle ammoing, simple past and past participle ammoed)

1. (transitive, informal) To load up on ammunition.

   Synonym: ammo up

   • 2001, H. Beam Piper, Uller Uprising:

     "Harry and Hassan are getting the car re-ammoed; they dropped me off here.

• “ammo n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present

• Mamo, MoMA, OMAM, mamo

From Proto-Finnic *ammo, from Proto-Uralic *aŋmɜ-. Cognate to Ingrian ammillaa, Votic ammulla, Estonian ammuli, Estonian ammu, Livonian amtlõ (“to yawn”), Skolt Sami ämmsõddâd (“to yawn”), Western Mari [script needed] (omeštaš, “to talk or move while in sleep or to talk unclearly”), Southern Selkup [script needed] (āmmu-, “yawnable, something that makes one to yawn”) (Ket), Kamassian [script needed] (a’moi-, “yawnable, something that makes one to yawn”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɑmːo/, [ˈɑ̝mːo̞]
• Rhymes: -ɑmːo
• Syllabification^(key): am‧mo
• Hyphenation^(key): am‧mo

ammo (dialectal, rare)

1. something that widens on a mouth section, like a mouth or a cavity

• Junttila, Santeri, Kallio, Petri, Holopainen, Sampsa, Kuokkala, Juha, Pystynen, Juho, editors (2020–), “ammo”, in Suomen vanhimman sanaston etymologinen verkkosanakirja‎^[1] (in Finnish), retrieved 1 January 2024
• “ammuli”, in [ETY] Eesti etümoloogiasõnaraamat [Estonian Etymological Dictionary] (in Estonian) (online version), Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus (Estonian Language Foundation), 2012
• Itkonen, Erkki, Kulonen, Ulla-Maija, editors (1992–2000), Suomen sanojen alkuperä [The Origin of Finnish Words]‎^[2] (in Finnish) (online version; note: also includes other etymological sources; this source is labeled "SSA 1992–2000"), Helsinki: Institute for the Languages of Finland/Finnish Literature Society, →ISBN
• Koponen, Eino, Ruppel, Klaas, Aapala, Kirsti, editors (2002–2008), Álgu database: Etymological database of the Saami languages‎^[3], Helsinki: Research Institute for the Languages of Finland

Borrowed from Arabic أَمَّا (ʔammā, “as for”).

ammo

1. but