tame

comparative tamer · superlative tamest

1. Under human control.
2. Docile or tranquil towards humans.

   The lion was quite tame.

3. figurativelyOf a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.

   What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines? McArdle had just been studying the matter with the aid of our tame scientist at the office, and he picked from his desk two of those many-coloured spectral bands which bear a general resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some young and ambitious cricket club.

   1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

4. obsoleteOf a non-Westernised person, accustomed to European society.

   The victim was Captain Bickenson, who had gone there from Port Darwin to try the pearling grounds, and for this purpose employed a number of tame blacks about the schooner.

   1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 290

5. Not exciting.

   This party is too tame for me.

   2 more examples

   For a thriller, that film was really tame.

   Wow! So the implication there is that even 12-year-olds in France will find the movie tame. “Yes, eet was a, an amusing erotic trifle, I supposa. Ze love-making was passable, but, uh, belt play is a leettle pedestriahn, don’t you seenk?”.

   2015 February 15, “Tobacco”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 2, episode 2, John Oliver (actor), via HBO

   Synonyms: dull, flat, insipid, unexciting · Antonyms: exciting

6. Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.

   tame slaves of the laborious plough

   a. 1685, Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon, Paraphrase on the 148th Psalm

7. mathematicsCapable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.

   Antonyms: wild

present singular third person tames · participle present taming · participle past tamed · past tamed

1. transitiveTo make or become tame; to domesticate (an animal).

   He tamed the wild horse.

   4 more examples

   Tambourines are shy birds and do not tame easily.

   2006, Gayle Soucek, Doves, page 78

   None but Adrian could have tamed the motley population of London, which, like a troop of unbitted steeds rushing to their pastures, had thrown aside all minor fears, through the operation of the fear paramount.

   1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter XIX, in The Last Man. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC

   Richard Wrangham has noted that the domestication of animals usually tames them by slowing down components of the developmental timetable to retain juvenile traits into adulthood, a process called pedomorphy or neoteny.

   2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, published 2012, page 744

   Due to his ingenuity Homo learned to unleash the energy of wood by taming wild fire and stepped into the pyrocultural age.

   2018, Johannes Deutsch, “Exploring energy related knowledge in technology and natural science education: Uncovering energy related understanding of students in the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia at the end of lower secondary education”, in Marc J. de Vries et al., editors, Research in Technology Education: International Approaches, page 45

   Synonyms: gentle

2. transitiveTo make submissive.

   The governor tames the engine.

3. To take control of something that is unruly.

   Police have to tame the riots.

present singular third person tames · participle present taming · participle past tamed · past tamed

1. UKdialectalobsoleteTo broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.

   In the time of famine he is the Joseph of the country, and keeps the poor from starving. Then he tameth his stacks of corn, which not his covetousness, but providence, hath reserved for time of need.

   1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Roger Daniel for John Williams, […], →OCLC

1. A surname transferred from the nickname.
2. A river in the West Midlands, Warwickshire and Staffordshire, England, a tributary to the Trent.
3. A river in Greater Manchester, England, which joins the River Goyt at Stockport, then becoming the River Mersey.