teem

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To be stocked to overflowing.

   But well he knew his teeming pangs were vain, Till Midwife Dryden eas’d his labouring Brain;

2. 2
   verb

   To be prolific; to abound; to be rife.

   Fish teem in this pond.

3. 3
   verb

   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; […]"

4. 4
   verb

   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.

5. 5
   noun

   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[…]

6. 6
   verb

   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.

7. 7
   verb

   To think fit.

   Ah, said he, thou hast confessed and bewrayed all, I could teem it to rend thee in pieces

8. 8
   verb

   move in large numbers

Etymology

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).