Adjective: tame
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | tamer |
| Superlative | tamest |
Perifrastic
Sample 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. [1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:]
-
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. [1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 290:]
-
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?”. [2015 February 15, “Tobacco”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 2, episode 2, John Oliver (actor), via HBO:]
-
tame slaves of the laborious plough [a. 1685, Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon, Paraphrase on the 148th Psalm:]
Adjectives inflected like tame
scarce,
smoove,
sombre,
wholsome,
sheene,
bolshie,
baroque,
concrete,
seveare,
comf'table,
shrewde,
'umble,
grislie,
unsubtle,
ungentle,
indiscrete,
couthie,
chavvie,
lissome,
cutesie, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
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”).
2. 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”).
3. 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”). See: Dutch Adjectives '
tam', German Adjectives '
zahm', Swedish Adjectives '
tam'.