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Word Nerd: "hams"
Context and Language Videos
Act 2,
Scene 2
Lines 196-203

An explanation of the word "hams" in Act 2, Scene 2 of myShakespeare's Hamlet. 

myShakespeare | Hamlet 2.2 Word Nerd: Ham

Hamlet   

Slanders, sir. For the satirical rogue says here that 
old men have gray beards, that their faces are wrinkled,
their eyes purging thick amber or plumtree gum, and
that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with
weak hams — all which, sir, though I most powerfully
and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it 
thus set down. For you yourself, sir, should be old as I am
if, like a crab, you could go backward.    
Video Transcript: 

SARAH: When Hamlet mocks Polonius by saying he's an old man with weak hams, he means he has weak legs, or more specifically weak thighs. The word "ham" comes from the German word for bend, and in English it originally meant the crook, or bend in the back of the knee, where your "hamstring" tendon is located. Eventually it came to mean the back of the leg, then the thigh, and now most commonly the meat from the upper leg of a hog.