different between tractable vs tame

English

Etymology

From Latin tract?bilis (“that may be touched, handled, or managed”), from tract? (“take in hand, handle, manage”), frequentative of trah? (“draw”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /?t?æk.t?.b?l/

Adjective

tractable (comparative more tractable, superlative most tractable)

1. (of people) Capable of being easily led, taught, or managed.

   Synonyms: docile, manageable, governable
2. (of a problem) Easy to deal with or manage
   • 1839, Charles Dickens Nicholas Nickleby, ch. 61:

     Of all the tractable, equal-tempered, attached, and faithful beings that ever lived, I believe he was the most so.
3. Capable of being shaped; malleable.
   • 1866, P. Le Neve Foster, "Report on the Art-Workmanship Prizes", reprinted in Journal of the Society of Arts, March 2, 1966:

     I need not point out the advantages of modelling in a material as durable as stone. . . . Mixed up with just enough water to form a stiff paste, it accommodates itself to the touch of the modelling tool. . . . There are two inherent difficulties in using it—one, it is not so tractable as clay. . . .

4. (obsolete) Capable of being handled or touched.

   Synonyms: palpable, practicable, feasible, serviceable

   • 1707, Thomas Brown, "Moll Quarles's Answer to Mother Creswell of Famous Memory" in The Second Volume of the Works of Mr. Tho. Brown, containing Letters from the Dead to the Living both Serious and Comical, part three, page 184:

     At lea?t five Hundred of the?e reforming Vultures are daily plundering our Pockets, and ran?acking our Hou?es, leaving me ?ometimes not one pair of Tractable Buttocks in my Vaulting-School to provide for my Family, or earn me ?o much as a Pudding for my next Sundays Dinner : [...]

5. (mathematics) Sufficiently operationalizable or useful to allow a mathematical calculation to proceed toward a solution.
   • 1987, Ira Horowitz, "Market Structure Implications of Export-Price Uncertainty," Managerial and Decision Economics, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 134:

     This assumption is in the Raiffa and Schlaifer (1961, p. 72) spirit of using ‘a little ingenuity. . . to find a tractable function’ to quantify risk-preferences and probability judgments so as to make the analysis feasible.

6. (computer science, of a decision problem) Algorithmically solvable fast enough to be practically relevant, typically in polynomial time.

Antonyms

• intractable

Related terms

• tractability
• tractableness
• tractably

Translations

References

• tractable at OneLook Dictionary Search

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: t?m, IPA^(key): /te?m/
• Rhymes: -e?m
• Homophone: Thame

Etymology 1

From Middle English tame, tome, weak inflection forms of Middle English tam, tom, from Old English tam, tom (“domesticated, tame”), from Proto-West Germanic *tam (“tame”), from Proto-Germanic *tamaz (“brought into the home, tame”), from Proto-Indo-European *demh?- (“to tame, dominate”). Cognate with Scots tam, tame (“tame”), Saterland Frisian tom (“tame”), West Frisian tam (“tame”), Dutch tam (“tame”), Low German Low German tamm, tahm (“tame”), German zahm (“tame”), Swedish tam (“tame”), Icelandic tamur (“tame”).

The verb is from Middle English tamen, temen, temien, from Old English temian (“to tame”), from Proto-West Germanic *tammjan, from Proto-Germanic *tamjan? (“to tame”).

Adjective

tame (comparative tamer, superlative tamest)

1. Not or no longer wild; domesticated.

   Antonym: wild

2. (chiefly of animals) Mild and well-behaved; accustomed to human contact.

   Synonym: gentle

3. (figuratively) Of a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.
4. Not exciting.

   Synonyms: dull, flat, insipid, unexciting

   Antonym: exciting
5. Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
   • a. 1685, Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon, Paraphrase on the 148th Psalm

     tame slaves of the laborious plough

6. (mathematics, of a knot) Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.

   Antonym: wild

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:tame.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

tame (third-person singular simple present tames, present participle taming, simple past and past participle tamed)

1. (transitive) To make (an animal) tame; to domesticate.

2. (intransitive) To become tame or domesticated.
   • 2006, Gayle Soucek, Doves (page 78)

     Tambourines are shy birds and do not tame easily.

3. (transitive) To make gentle or meek.

   to tame a rebellion

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• tame on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

From Middle English tamen (“to cut into, broach”). Compare French entamer.

Verb

tame (third-person singular simple present tames, present participle taming, simple past and past participle tamed)

1. (obsolete, Britain, dialect) To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.
   • 1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State

     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.

Anagrams

• AEMT, ATEM, Atem, META, Meta, Team, Tema, mate, maté, meat, meta, meta-, team

Inari Sami

Etymology

From Proto-Samic *?ëm?.

Noun

ta?e

1. glue

Inflection

Further reading

• Koponen, Eino; Ruppel, Klaas; Aapala, Kirsti, editors (2002-2008) Álgu database: Etymological database of the Saami languages?^[2], Helsinki: Research Institute for the Languages of Finland

Japanese

Romanization

tame

1. R?maji transcription of ??

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old English tam, tom, from Proto-Germanic *tamaz (“tame”).

Adjective

tame

1. (of animals) tame, domesticated
2. (of plants) cultivated, domesticated
3. overcome, subdued
4. (of people) meek, compliant
5. (anatomy, medicine, of a fistula) inner, interior

Alternative forms

• tam; tom, tome (early Southwest and Southwest Midlands)

Descendants

• English: tame
• Scots: tame

References

• “t?me, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Etymology 2

Verb

tame (third-person singular simple present tameth, present participle tamynge, first-/third-person singular past indicative and past participle tamed)

1. Alternative form of tamen (“to cut, carve”)

Etymology 3

Noun

tame (uncountable)

1. (Northern) Alternative form of tome (“freetime”)

Norwegian Nynorsk

Adjective

tame

1. (non-standard since 2012) definite singular of tam
2. (non-standard since 2012) plural of tam

Swedish

Adjective

tame

1. absolute definite natural masculine form of tam.

Anagrams

• meta, team, tema