English

Pronunciation

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

Verb

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

1. To be stocked to overflowing.
   • Sir Walter Scott

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

2. To be prolific; to abound.
   • 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.

Translations

Etymology 2

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

Verb

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

1. (archaic) To empty.
   • 1913, D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 9

     “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 team 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.

Translations

Etymology 3

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.

Verb

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?)

Anagrams

• meet
• mete

Dutch

Pronunciation

Verb

teem

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