tame

Meanings

Adjective

• Not or no longer wild; domesticated.
• Mild and well-behaved; accustomed to human contact.
• Of a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.
• Not exciting.
• Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
• Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.

Verb

• To make (an animal) tame; to domesticate.
• To become tame or domesticated.
• To make gentle or meek.
• To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.

Origin

• From Middle English tame, tome, weak inflection forms of Middle English tam, tom, from Old English tam, tom, from Proto-West Germanic *tam, from Proto-Germanic *tamaz, from Proto-Indo-European *demh₂-. Cognate with Scots tam, tame, Saterland Frisian tom, West Frisian tam, Dutch tam, Low German Low German tamm, tahm, German zahm, Danish tam, Swedish tam, Icelandic tamur.
• The verb is from Middle English tamen, temen, temien, from Old English temian, from Proto-West Germanic *tammjan, from Proto-Germanic *tamjaną.
• From Middle English tamen ("to cut into, broach"). Compare French entamer.