teem
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English temen (“to bear, to support”), from Anglian Old English tēman (“to give birth”) (West Saxon Old English tīeman), from Proto-West Germanic *taumijan (“to bridle”), from Proto-Germanic *taumijaną, from *taumaz ("bridle", continued in Modern English as team).
Inflected forms:
form: teems
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: teeming
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: teemed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: teemed
pos: verb
tags: past
form: teems
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To be stocked to overflowing.
pos: verb
examples: But well he knew his teeming pangs were vain,
Till Midwife Dryden eas’d his labouring Brain;
his mind teeming with schemes of future deceit to cover former villainy
gloss: To be prolific; to abound; to be rife.
pos: verb
examples: Fish teem in this pond.
The steel works, with their Siemens furnaces, the rail-rolling mill with its enormous single-cylinder engine fitted with Corliss valve gear, and the forge in which were installed the great steam hammers and hydraulic presses—these were teeming with interest, and the best way to pick up information was to work with the millwrights.
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.
gloss: To fall prolifically.
pos: verb
examples: "Troth, it's teemin' powerful this instiant up there in the mountains. 'Twill be much if you land home afore it's atop of you; […]"
... rain teemed from the overcast skies, cold and penetrating, and life began to look like one enormous funeral procession.
The snow teemed like white bugs against Mark's windshield for the entire long, silent, thirty-five-mile drive out to her new-rich fantasy- "The Farm" that she shared with my stepfather, Bill : […]
[As] rain teemed down, the passenger peered out from the tinted window.
Rain teemed from a moonless sky. Splashing in white dashes on the boating lake. Puddles grew at the feet of a man in a crash helmet and a long dark riding coat. Rain streamed down his goggles as he watched Miriam's window.
Rain teemed down in sheets. I closed all the windows, took a quick shower, threw on jeans and a silk turtleneck sweater, grabbed an energy bar, and drove to work. Rain pelted the pavement as I cut across the parking lot […]
... snow teemed upon The Clearing. The cloying wetness of the stuff rose up above his elbows as he, dog-like, lurched on fours towards the centre of the sleeping meadow, as if meaning to out-strip his fellows and flee. But he gurgled back[…]
... rain teemed round me, making everything unstable, shifting and falling down; my condition would not matter.
gloss: To bring forth young, as an animal; to produce fruit, as a plant; to bear; to be pregnant; to conceive; to multiply.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
examples: If she must teem, / Create her child of spleen.
gloss: A downpour (of rain).
pos: noun
examples: ... a teem of rain that poured down so copiously it ran in surface streamlets over the plains. I may literally say we came to anchor this evening in a sheet of water, the prairie, as far as we could see, presenting the same aqueous[…]
... under the great teems of rain, and houldin' up the grandest new green umbrella ever you laid eyes on. Fine it was entirely, and an iligant body I was consaitin' meself, goodness forgive me.
... a teem of rain and the geranium tremens.
... a teem of rain, and blast of wind; and Katie felt a terrible, deep cold, as if it had got down into her bones and she would never be warm again.
Synonyms: swarm
Derived words: overteem
teemer
teemful
teemless
teem with
Translations: