tame

 

• enPR: tām, IPA^(key): /teɪm/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪm
• Homophone: Thame

From Middle English tame, tome, weak inflection forms of Middle English tam, tom, from Old English tam, tom (“domesticated, tame”), from Proto-West Germanic *tam (“tame”), from Proto-Germanic *tamaz (“brought into the home, tame”), from Proto-Indo-European *demh₂- (“to tame, dominate”).

Cognate with Scots tam, tame (“tame”), Saterland Frisian tom (“tame”), West Frisian tam (“tame”), Dutch tam (“tame”), Low German Low German tamm, tahm (“tame”), German zahm (“tame”), Danish tam (“tame”), Swedish tam (“tame”), Icelandic tamur (“tame”).

The verb is from Middle English tamen, temen, temien, from Old English temian (“to tame”), from Proto-West Germanic *tammjan, from Proto-Germanic *tamjaną (“to tame”).

tame (comparative tamer, superlative tamest)

1. Not or no longer wild; domesticated.

   Antonym: wild

   They have a tame wildcat.

2. (chiefly of animals) Mild and well-behaved; accustomed to human contact.

   Synonym: gentle

   The lion was quite tame.

3. (figurative) Of a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.
   • 1913, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Poison Belt‎^[1]:

     What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines? McArdle had just been studying the matter with the aid of our tame scientist at the office, and he picked from his desk two of those many-coloured spectral bands which bear a general resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some young and ambitious cricket club.

4. Not exciting.

   Synonyms: dull, flat, insipid, unexciting

   Antonym: exciting

   This party is too tame for me.

   For a thriller, that film was really tame.

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5. Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
   • a. 1685, Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon, Paraphrase on the 148th Psalm

     tame slaves of the laborious plough

6. (mathematics, of a knot) Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.

   Antonym: wild

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:tame.

tame (third-person singular simple present tames, present participle taming, simple past and past participle tamed)

1. (transitive) To make (an animal) tame; to domesticate.

   He tamed the wild horse.

2. (intransitive) To become tame or domesticated.
   • 2006, Gayle Soucek, Doves (page 78)

     Tambourines are shy birds and do not tame easily.

3. (transitive) To make gentle or meek.

   to tame a rebellion

•   tame on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From Middle English tamen (“to cut into, broach”). Compare French entamer.

tame (third-person singular simple present tames, present participle taming, simple past and past participle tamed)

1. (obsolete, UK, dialect) To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.
   • 1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Roger Daniel for John Williams, […], →OCLC:

     In the time of famine he is the Joseph of the country, and keeps the poor from starving. Then he tameth his stacks of corn, which not his covetousness, but providence, hath reserved for time of need.

• AEMT, ATEM, Atem, META, Meta, Team, Tema, mate, maté, meat, meta, meta-, team

From Proto-Samic *δëmē.

taṃe

1. glue

• Koponen, Eino, Ruppel, Klaas, Aapala, Kirsti, editors (2002–2008), Álgu database: Etymological database of the Saami languages‎^[2], Helsinki: Research Institute for the Languages of Finland

tame

1. Rōmaji transcription of ため

From Old English tam, tom, from Proto-West Germanic *tam (“tame”).

tame

1. (of animals) tame, domesticated
2. (of plants) cultivated, domesticated
3. overcome, subdued
4. (of people) meek, compliant
5. (anatomy, medicine, of a fistula) inner, interior

• tam; tom, tome (early Southwest and Southwest Midlands)

• English: tame
• Scots: tame

• “tāme, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

tame (third-person singular simple present tameth, present participle tamende, tamynge, first-/third-person singular past indicative and past participle tamed)

1. Alternative form of tamen (“to cut, carve”)

tame (uncountable)

1. (Northern) Alternative form of tome (“freetime”)

tame

1. (non-standard since 2012) definite singular of tam
2. (non-standard since 2012) plural of tam

tame

1. (deprecated template usage) definite natural masculine singular of tam

• meta, team, tema