Not A Teacher
'Jammed up' here means too busy to do anything else
Apologies for missing the baptism.I am just too busy up here. I have to go back to hospital to be there for my mother.

Student or Learner
Hello - I am trying to understand the meaning of the slang word 'jammed up' in the following sentence:
Apologies for missing the baptism. I am just jammed up here. I have to go back to hospital to be there for my mother.
Not A Teacher
'Jammed up' here means too busy to do anything else
Apologies for missing the baptism.I am just too busy up here. I have to go back to hospital to be there for my mother.
The person has so many things going on that they cannot do them all, so they had to sacrifice going to the baptism in order to visit their mother.
It's an indirect reference to a log jam - where logs being harvested for timber are floated down river to the sawmill.
Occasionally, instead of all floating downriver in the same direction, some will get turned around or caught on something, causing a pile (jam) that prevents the logs behind them from flowing downriver.
In this case, instead of logs jamming up, it's the failure to complete one activity that has created a jam of his other intended activities.
Last edited by Skrej; 21-Sep-2015 at 20:26. Reason: typo :(
Maybe this will help you understand the meaning of jam better.
Another similar term we hear sometimes is 'to be in a jam'.
It is related to the idea of being jammed up.
To be in a jam means to be in a difficult position or situation.
It can be about money, trouble, relationships, time or other things.
Think about a traffic jam, a time jam, to be in a jam and being jammed up as having some related meanings.
I hope that Helps ~ Luke
Last edited by Rover_KE; 01-Mar-2016 at 09:48.
Other similar expressions include:
- swamped
- slammed
- plowed under
- under the gun
- down to the wire
I'm not a teacher. I speak American English. I've tutored writing at the University of Southern Maine and have done a good deal of copy editing and writing, occasionally for publication.
I've never heard "plowed under" (which in BrE would be "ploughed under") but we use "snowed under".
Remember - if you don't use correct capitalisation, punctuation and spacing, anything you write will be incorrect.