From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishtametame1 /teɪm/ adjective 1 HBAa tame animal or bird is not wild any longer, because it has been trained to live with people OPP wild tame elephants2 informalBORING dull and disappointing Most of the criticism has been pretty tame. I decided that teaching was too tame for me.3 [only before noun] British English used to describe a person who is willing to do what other people ask, even if it is slightly dishonest If you have a tame doctor, he might give you a sick note. —tamely adverb —tameness noun [uncountable]
Examples from the Corpus
tame• By these standards, the monks' self-denial seems tame.• It had all been very tame.• Seen in comparison with the preceding axial age, the Hellenistic age is tame and conservative.• These little fishes become quite tame and will respond at feeding time by rushing to their food like a litter of puppies.• Gardens contrived to divert the power of botanical growth into the tame artifacts of domesticated crops.• The jokes, when they do come, are rather tame but still funny.• The '70s series now seem tame by today's standards.• Not your weasel-faced tame magic, but root-and-branch magic, the old magic.• In the centre would be several lines of trestle tables carrying cages for chicken, ducks and geese with a few tame rabbits.tametame2 verb [transitive] 1 REDUCEto reduce the power or strength of something and prevent it from causing trouble The prime minister managed to tame the trade unions.2 HBATEACHto train a wild animal to obey you and not to attack people SYN domesticate The Asian elephant can be tamed and trained.→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
tame• Don Bradman, the catalyst of the affair, was only temporarily tamed, as his Test batting average of 56.57 testified.• Unlike her former co-star, Antonio Banderas, Abril has not been tamed by Hollywood.• He had fought a maddening, 24-hour battle against a river that California agriculture had tamed for more than a half century.• Statistics show that rent control laws haven't tamed inflation.• Where it should have tried harder, however, is with taming mechanical noise levels.• Is there a product to tame my hair?• These actions threw the economy into a recession, but also tamed the inflationary monster.• Children and, later, teenagers have to learn to put a brake on their impulses, to tame their desires.Origin tame1 Old English tam