Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To be full of things; abound or swarm: A drop of water teems with microorganisms.
- v. Obsolete To be or become pregnant; bear young.
- v. Archaic To give birth to.
- v. To pour out or empty: teemed the molten ore into a huge mold.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To produce; bring forth; bear.
- To bring; lead; take; reflexively, to betake one's self; appeal.
- To be or become pregnant; engender young; conceive; bear; produce.
- To be full as if ready to bring forth; be stocked to overflowing; be prolific or abundantly fertile.
- To be fit for; be becoming or appropriate to; befit.
- To think fit.
- To pour; empty; toom; specifically, to pour in the casting of crucible steel.
- To pour; come down in torrents: as, it not only rains, it teems.
- An old spelling of team.
Wiktionary
- v. To be stocked to overflowing
- v. To be prolific; to abound.
- v. archaic To empty.
- v. To pour (especially with rain)
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. Obs. or Prov. Eng. To pour; -- commonly followed by
out . - v. (Steel Manuf.) To pour, as steel, from a melting pot; to fill, as a mold, with molten metal.
- v. Obs. or R. To think fit.
- v. To bring forth young, as an animal; to produce fruit, as a plant; to bear; to be pregnant; to conceive; to multiply.
- v. To be full, or ready to bring forth; to be stocked to overflowing; to be prolific; to abound.
- v. rare To produce; to bring forth.
WordNet 3.0
- v. move in large numbers
- v. be teeming, be abuzz
Etymologies
- From Old Norse tœma. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English temen, to beget, bear, from Old English tīeman, tēman. Middle English temen, from Old Norse töma. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The streets around the Jardin teem with restaurants and artisan shops.”
Treasure of the Sierra Madre -- wintering in San Miguel de Allende
“The words of Father John A. Conway, S.J. (in the preface to Fr. von Hammerstein's work, "Edgar, or from Atheism to the Full Truth") may well be quoted in this connection: "Who can read the words that teem from the German”
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6: Fathers of the Church-Gregory XI
“Satyam you brought up Shakespeare; let me add Joyce: much as I love Ulysses and Leopold Bloom, the novel does not "teem".”
“Even the likes of Ghajini do not "teem" the way a really high-quality masala movie would; and the likes of Bhansali provoke death-by-stupefaction at the juxtaposition of the cavernous interiors and mere handful of characters.”
“Immaculate and often monochrome, his paintings teem with an all but inscrutable iconography of personal history.”
The Huffington Post: Nicole Garton: Ingenue Interview: Ugo Nonis
“Our suggested walk to Shipstal Beach, a gorgeous sweep of sand that bleeds into the trees behind, takes you through some classic English woodland, past ponds that teem with frogs and newts, and to a hide from which you can watch the birds that have made their home here.”
The Guardian: Secret beaches of the south-west: Shipstal Beach< Dorset
“It is time to hold the lazy and the unwilling accountable and make teem earn their way.”
“All of us will benefit from a world where ocean ecosystems teem with the myriad species that provide humankind with food and livelihoods, and from the joy of sharing our world with mysterious and beautiful animals like sharks.”
The Huffington Post: Julie Packard: It's Time to Save Sharks
“Or, if it exists, it exists tucked away in the alleyways and energetic souqs of the Christian and Muslim Quarters and in East Jerusalem, north of Damascus Gate, where the streets still teem with life later into the night.”
The Huffington Post: Kazim Ali: A Walking Guide to the Heart of a City
“Microorganisms now teem in almost every habitat, from poles to deserts to geysers, rocks, and the inky depths of the oceans.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘teem’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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501
Classic
mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly and 401 more...
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501
Classic
abhor, mirth, obtuse, iota, vex, irk, teem, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane and 401 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Darkness of Mind
fiend, lurid, phantom, macabre, rotten, ghastly, sallow, ghoulish, pallid, crooked, wan, congeal and 5 more...
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WordMasters Blue Division Set 2
rampage, prissy, trample, infamy, severe, deplete, callow, slacken, threshold, obscure, teem, barren and 12 more...
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cotton
Cotton is a blended word with rich flavor. One meaning root is from the semitic root qtn that means to 'become thin or fine'; and the other meaning is from Welsh cytun or cytun that means to ' agr...
cotton, hosanna, Seneca, crab, hock, bow, bark, carousal, limber, rash, beguine, kennel and 26 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Words
My list of words.
veritable, facetious, nadir, quixotic, apropos, acquiesce, ostensible, insipid, egregious, inveterate, coax, adroit and 409 more...
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(more or less) Temporary Urth List
Temporary list is temporary.
Collecting a few words here, which are then to be alloted to other lists.vassal, gnaw, putrescence, liege, pederasty, disseminate, loot, waning, fitful, hiatuse, plow, pious and 292 more...
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Professional Scrabble Lexicon (TWL)
A myriad of game-changing words every Scrabble addict must have in his arsenal.
Keep in mind that these are all tried-and-true feasibly playable words selected for their handiness, i.e...paragon, pignora, ganef, suttee, origan, ohia, aioli, abasement, lehr, mho, tallow, harelike and 843 more...
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Slang words of Irish origin according...
Compare the etymologies of these words as given in the OED with the Gaelic backgrounders in this book, How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads (Counterpunch, 2007). Awai...
smack, snazzy, pussy, geek, dork, dude, smudge, snap, slugger, slum, scam, slew and 102 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for teem.
fbharjo prolific or fit or empty Feb 8, 2013
oroboros Meet in reverse. Jul 22, 2007