tame

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: tām, IPA^(key): /teɪm/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪm
• Homophone: Thame

Etymology 1

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”).

Adjective

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, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt , London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     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. (obsolete) Of a non-Westernised person, accustomed to European society.
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 290:

     The victim was Captain Bickenson, who had gone there from Port Darwin to try the pearling grounds, and for this purpose employed a number of tame blacks about the schooner.

5. Not exciting.

   Synonyms: dull, flat, insipid, unexciting

   Antonym: exciting

   This party is too tame for me.

   For a thriller, that film was really tame.

   • 2015 February 15, “Tobacco”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 2, episode 2, John Oliver (actor), via HBO:

     Wow! So the implication there is that even 12-year-olds in France will find the movie tame. “Yes, eet was a, an amusing erotic trifle, I supposa. Ze love-making was passable, but, uh, belt play is a leettle pedestriahn, don’t you seenk?”.

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

     tame slaves of the laborious plough

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

   Antonym: wild

Quotations

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

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

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

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• tame on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

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

Verb

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.

Anagrams

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

Inari Sami

Etymology

From Proto-Samic *δëmē.

Pronunciation

This entry needs pronunciation information. If you are familiar with the IPA then please add some!

Noun

taṃe

1. glue

Inflection

Further reading

• tame in Marja-Liisa Olthuis, Taarna Valtonen, Miina Seurujärvi and Trond Trosterud (2015–2022) Nettidigisäänih Anarâškiela-suomakielâ-anarâškielâ sänikirje‎, Tromsø: UiT

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

Japanese

Romanization

tame

1. Rōmaji transcription of ため

Middle English

Etymology 1

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

Adjective

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

Alternative forms

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

Descendants

• English: tame
• Scots: tame

References

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

Etymology 2

Verb

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”)

Etymology 3

Noun

tame (uncountable)

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

Norwegian Nynorsk

Adjective

tame

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

Serbo-Croatian

Noun

tame (Cyrillic spelling таме)

1. inflection of tama:
   1. genitive singular
   2. nominative/accusative/vocative plural

Swedish

Adjective

tame

1. definite natural masculine singular of tam

Anagrams

• meta, team, tema