tame

Meanings

1. Accustomed to human contact.
2. Docile or tranquil towards humans.
3. Of a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.
4. Of a non-Westernised person, accustomed to European society.
5. Not exciting.
6. Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
7. Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.

1. To make (an animal) tame; to domesticate.
2. To make submissive or docile.
3. To take control of something that is unruly.
4. To become tame or domesticated.
5. To make gentle or meek.

1. To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.

1. A surname transferred from the nickname.
2. A river in the West Midlands, Warwickshire and Staffordshire, England, a tributary to the Trent.
3. A river in Greater Manchester, England, which joins the River Goyt at Stockport, then becoming the River Mersey.

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”).