Teem

Pronunciation

• IPA: /tiːm/
• Rhymes: -iːm
• Homophones: team

From Old English tēman, whence also team.

Full definition of teem

Verb

1. To be stocked to overflowing.
• Sir Walter Scotthis mind teeming with schemes of future deceit to cover former villainy
2. To be prolific; to abound.
• 2013-06-22, Snakes and ladders, 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.
• ShakespeareIf she must teem,
  Create her child of spleen.

From Old Norse tœma.

Verb

1. (archaic) To empty.
• 1913, D. H. Lawrence, ,“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.

See tame (adjective) and compare beteem.

Verb

1. (obsolete, rare) To think fit.

Anagrams

• meet
• mete