teem

From Middle English temen (“to bear, to support”), from Old English tēman, whence also team.

• IPA^(key): /tiːm/
• Rhymes: -iːm
• Homophone: team

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teem (third-person singular simple present teems, present participle teeming, simple past and past participle teemed)

1. To be stocked to overflowing.
   • 1685, Matthew Prior, “A Satyr on the modern Translators”, in H. Bunker Wright, Monroe K. Spears, editors, The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, volume I, Second edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1971, page 20:

     But well he knew his teeming pangs were vain,
     Till Midwife Dryden eas’d his labouring Brain;

   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir Walter Scott

     his mind teeming with schemes of future deceit to cover former villainy

2. To be prolific; to abound; to be rife.

   • Fish teem in this pond.

   • 2013 June 22, “Snakes and ladders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 76:

     Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins.

3. To bring forth young, as an animal; to produce fruit, as a plant; to bear; to be pregnant; to conceive; to multiply.
   • Shakespeare

     If she must teem, / Create her child of spleen.

From Middle English temen (“to drain”), from Old Norse tœma, from Proto-Germanic *tōmijaną (“to empty, make empty”). Related to English toom (“empty, vacant”). More at toom.

teem (third-person singular simple present teems, present participle teeming, simple past and past participle teemed)

1. (archaic) To empty.
   • 1849, G. C. Greenwell, A Glossary of Terms used in the Coal Trade of Northumberland and Durham

     [The banksman] also puts the full tubs to the weighing machine, and thence to the skreens, upon which he teems the coals. It is also his duty to keep an account of the quantity of coals and stones drawn each day.

   • 1913, D. H. Lawrence, “ Chapter 9 on Wikisource.Wikisource:Sons and Lovers/Chapter 9”, in Sons_and_Lovers:

     “Are you sure they’re good lodgings?” she asked.
     “Yes—yes. Only—it’s a winder when you have to pour your own tea out—an’ nobody to grouse if you teem it in your saucer and sup it up. It somehow takes a’ the taste out of it.”

2. To pour (especially with rain)
3. To pour, as steel, from a melting pot; to fill, as a mould, with molten metal.

From Middle English temen (“to be suitable, befit”), from Old English *teman, from Proto-Germanic *temaną (“to fit”). Cognate with Low German temen, tamen (“to befit”), Dutch betamen (“to befit”), German ziemen. See also tame (adjective) and compare beteem.

teem (third-person singular simple present teems, present participle teeming, simple past and past participle teemed)

1. (obsolete, rare) To think fit.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of G. Gifford to this entry?)

• Teme, etem, meet, mete, teme

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teem

1. first-person singular present indicative of temen
2. imperative of temen

teem

1. Alternative form of teme (“folk”)