seem

present singular third person seems · participle present seeming · participle past seemed · past seemed · alternative obsolete seme

1. copulativeTo appear; to look outwardly; to be perceived as.

   It seems a pity, but I can't see you this weekend.

   5 more examples

   She is seeming a bit down these days. Her eyes seem blue. It must have seemed to her she was safe. How'd she seem to you? He seems not to be at home. "It seems like rain". "It seems to me (to be) rather sleety."; "There seem to be a few problems."

   He is so fayre, withoutten les, / he semys full well to sytt on des.

   He is so fair, without any limit; his appearance shows well when he sits on the dais.

   15th c., “[The Creation]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI), London: […] Oxford University Press, 1897, →OCLC, page 5

   1813 (14ᵗʰc.), Dante Alighieri, The Vision of Hell as translated by The Rev. H. F. Cary. He, from his face removing the gross air, / Oft his left hand forth stretch'd, and seem'd alone / By that annoyance wearied.

   They burned the old gun that used to stand in the dark corner up in the garret, close to the stuffed fox that always grinned so fiercely. Perhaps the reason why he seemed in such a ghastly rage was that he did not come by his death fairly. Otherwise his pelt would not have been so perfect. And why else was he put away up there out of sight?—and so magnificent a brush as he had too.[…].

   1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC

   That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter II, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

2. obsoleteTo befit; to beseem.

   And all within were pathes and alleies wide, With footing worne, and leading inward farre: Faire harbour that them seemes; so in they entred arre.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene