“taming” is a form of
tame
/teɪm/ adjective, verb, proper noun
Forms tamer tamest tames taming tamed
- adjective Under human control.
- adjective (chiefly of animals) Docile or tranquil towards humans. “The lion was quite tame.”
- adjective (figurative) Of a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.
- adjective (obsolete) Of a non-Westernised person, accustomed to European society.
- adjective Not exciting. “This party is too tame for me.”
- adjective Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
- adjective (mathematics, of a knot) Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.
- verb (transitive) To make or become tame; to domesticate (an animal). “He tamed the wild horse.”
- verb (transitive) To make submissive. “The governor tames the engine.”
- verb To take control of something that is unruly. “Police have to tame the riots.”
- verb (obsolete, UK, dialect) To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.
- proper noun A surname transferred from the nickname.
- proper noun A river in the West Midlands, Warwickshire and Staffordshire, England, a tributary to the Trent.
- proper noun A river in Greater Manchester, England, which joins the River Goyt at Stockport, then becoming the River Mersey.
Synonyms
dull flat insipid unexciting gentle chasten subdue tone down moderate domesticate cultivate naturalize naturalise domesticize domesticise reclaim tamed meek
Antonyms
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”).
From Middle English tamen (“to cut into, broach”). Compare French entamer.
English surname, from the adjective Middle English tame as a nickname, and in some cases a habitational surname from Thame in Oxfordshire.
Webster’s 1913
- verb To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.]
- adjective Reduced from a state of native wildness and shyness; accustomed to man; domesticated; domestic; as, a tame deer, a tame bird.
- adjective Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
- verb To reduce from a wild to a domestic state; to make gentle and familiar; to reclaim; to domesticate; as, to tame a wild beast.
Etymology [Cf. F. entamer to cut into, to broach.]
Etymology [AS. tam; akin to D. tam, G. zahm, OHG. zam, Dan. & Sw. tam, Icel. tamr, L. domare to tame, Gr. dam to be tame, to tame, and perhaps to E. beteem. *61. Cf. Adamant, Diamond, Dame, Daunt, Indomitable.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “tame”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details