Word.ws English Dictionary

teem

/tiːm/

teem verb: to be stocked to overflowing.

Verb (1)

teem (third-person singular simple present teems, present participle teeming, simple past and past participle teemed)

  1. To be stocked to overflowing.
    • But well he knew his teeming pangs were vain,
      Till Midwife Dryden eas’d his labouring Brain;1685, Matthew Prior, “A Satyr on the modern Translators”, in H. Bunker Wright, Monroe K. Spears, editors, The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, Second edition, volume I, Oxford: Clarendon Press...
    • his mind teeming with schemes of future deceit to cover former villainy1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown...
  2. To be prolific; to abound; to be rife.
    • 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...1944 November and December, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 341
    Synonyms:
    swarm
  3. (snow, etc) To fall prolifically.
    • "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; […]"1895, Jane Barlow, Strangers at Lisconnel: A Second Series of Irish Idylls, page 45
    • ... rain teemed from the overcast skies, cold and penetrating, and life began to look like one enormous funeral procession.1912, Ainslee's, page 137
  4. (obsolete) To bring forth young, as an animal; to produce fruit, as a plant; to bear; to be pregnant; to conceive; to multiply.
    • If she must teem, / Create her child of spleen.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...

Noun

teem (plural teems)

  1. A downpour (of rain).
    • ... 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[…]1851, William Kelly (J.P.), An Excursion to California Over the Prairie, Rocky Mountains, and Great Sierra Nevada, with a Stroll Through the Diggings and Ranches of that Country, page 147
    • ... 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.1908, The Living Age, page 684

Verb (2)

teem (third-person singular simple present teems, present participle teeming, simple past and past participle teemed)

  1. (archaic) To empty.
    • [The banksman] also puts the full tubs to the weighing machine, and thence to the skreens, upon which he teems the coals. It is also his duty to keep an account of the quantity of coals and stones drawn each day.1849, G. C. Greenwell, A Glossary of Terms used in the Coal Trade of Northumberland and Durham
    • “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 teem it in your saucer and sup it up. It somehow takes a’ the taste out of it.”1913, D. H. Lawrence, “ Chapter 9 on Wikisource.Wikisource ”, in Sons_and_Lovers
  2. To pour (especially with rain)
  3. To pour, as steel, from a melting pot; to fill, as a mould, with molten metal.
  4. (Ireland, Scotland) To drain the water from (boiled potatoes etc.).

Verb (3)

teem (third-person singular simple present teems, present participle teeming, simple past and past participle teemed)

  1. (obsolete, rare) To think fit.
    • Ah, said he, thou hast confessed and bewrayed all, I could teem it to rend thee in pieces1603, George Gifford, Dialogue of Witches

teem meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

teem in Tamil

பெருகு, கொழி, நிறை, ஊற்று

teem in Urdu

بھر پور ہونا, حاملہ ہونا, ڈھلکانا, پیدا کرنا, انڈیلنا

teem in Malayalam

സമൃദ്ധിയായുണ്ടാവുക, പെരുകുക, നിറഞ്ഞിരിക്കുക

teem in Kannada

ತುಂಬಿರು, ತುಂಬಿತುಳುಕು, ಮುಸುರು, ತೆರವುಮಾಡು, ಬರಿದುಮಾಡು, ಚೆಲ್ಲು
More languagesFewer languages
teem in Arabic
اِزْدَحَمَ izdaḥama

Examples of teem in a sentence

  • 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.2013 June 22, “Snakes and ladders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 76:
  • 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 : […]2003, Joel Turnipseed, Baghdad Express: A Gulf War Memoir, Minnesota Historical Society Press, →ISBN, page 26:
  • [As] rain teemed down, the passenger peered out from the tinted window.2010 October 24, Clive Webster, The Missing Model, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 116:
  • ... rain teemed round me, making everything unstable, shifting and falling down; my condition would not matter.2018 December 11, Tanith Lee, The Secret Books of Paradys, Open Road Media, →ISBN:

All 37 example sentences with teem

Synonyms of teem

Forms of teem

Verb
third-person singular presentteems
present participleteeming
past participleteemed
pastteemed
Noun
pluralteems

Past tense of teem: teemed

Origin of teem

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).

From Middle English temen (“to drain”), from Old Norse tœma, from Proto-Germanic *tōmijaną (“to empty, make empty”). Cognate to Swedish tömma. Related to English toom (“empty, vacant”). More at toom.

From Middle English temen (“to be suitable, befit”), from Old English *teman, from Proto-Germanic *temaną (“to fit”). Cognate with Low German temen, tamen (“to befit”), Dutch betamen (“to befit”), German ziemen. See also tame (adjective) and compare beteem.

Words formed from teem

Words that rhyme with teem

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about teem

What does teem mean?
Teem means to be stocked to overflowing.
What is teem in Tamil?
Teem in Tamil is பெருகு, கொழி, நிறை. See Teem meaning in Tamil.
How do you use teem in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is teem?
Teem can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce teem?
Teem is pronounced /tiːm/.
What is the past tense of teem?
The past tense of teem is teemed.

Words near teem in the dictionary

  1. Teeles
  2. Teeline
  3. Teels
  4. teelseed
  5. teelseeds
  6. teem
  7. teem down
  8. teem with
  9. teemed
  10. teemed down
  11. teemed with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: teem (page history and authors); teem (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); teem (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); teem (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); teem (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-teem.ogg.

Cite this entry: “teem.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/teem. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.