tame
/teɪm/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.56 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.
adj
Not exciting.
adj
adj
Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.
Example Sentences
- "The lion was quite tame."
- "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."
- "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."
- "This party is too tame for me."
- "For a thriller, that film was really tame."
- "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?”."
Etymology
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”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
- Obsolete
- Transitive verb
- British usage