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Tame   Listen
verb
Tame  v. t.  (past & past part. tamed; pres. part. taming)  
1.
To reduce from a wild to a domestic state; to make gentle and familiar; to reclaim; to domesticate; as, to tame a wild beast. "They had not been tamed into submission, but baited into savegeness and stubbornness."
2.
To subdue; to conquer; to repress; as, to tame the pride or passions of youth.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tame" Quotes from Famous Books



... had a break neck courage. Melanctha always loved to be with horses; she loved to do wild things, to ride the horses and to break and tame them. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein

... and if stolen little harm is done, as the cost is barely a penny apiece if made in large numbers. I have also known pheasants caught by the head and killed in them, the flesh with which they are baited being often attractive to tame-bred birds, which usually are fed with more or less ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... were homely, morning over her face. They were open now to what that fellow Woodseer (who could speak to the point when he was not aiming at it) called the parlour, or social sitting-room; where we may have converse with the tame woman's mind, seeing the door to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... inhabitants of every place invariably remove with their families on our arrival. There was, however, a fine old castle in ruins, which was well worth seeing, and must have been a place of some importance in former days; and a very superb mosque in the centre of the town, in which was a tame tiger. We left Schwun on Saturday, the 23rd, crossing the Arrul river, which flows round the town into the Indus, on pontoons, and commenced our first march in Upper Sinde. This day's march was delightful, and the only tolerable one we have had, all the rest being through a dismal, dusty desert, ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... was the mood in which he was beginning his monastic life; and when Brother Jerome, who was acting novice-master, began to instruct him in his monastic duty, he made up his mind to drive out that demon of criticism or rather to tame it to his own service by criticizing himself. He wrote on markers ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... though, as I opine, depending too much on the now somewhat obsolete narrative of Hammer-Purgstall ("Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs"). Almost incredible as they seem to us sober Westerns, such incidents as the tame surrender of Achmed III., the elevation of the lowliest demagogues to the highest positions in the realm, and the curious and characteristically oriental episode of the tulip-pots, are absolute facts. Naturally Jokai's splendid fancy has gorgeously embellished the plain narrative of the ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... rather tame to the little Beauchamps after that summer holiday, with the paddling and the boats, the rocks and the island! They took as much of it all home as they could convey in biscuit tins, and buckets, and cardboard boxes. But, after all, one cannot shut the ocean into a glass aquarium or hold the sunset ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow

... fearing that the adult beasts may not be able to adopt a change of surroundings and food, they bring the eggs to their nests and care for them at the same time as their own children. In time they come out and constitute a flock easy to tame. Other ants, still more intelligent, have discovered a method of holding the Aphides captive, while allowing them to enjoy their accustomed life, and to feed at will on the foods they prefer on their own favourite spots. It is sufficient for this purpose to establish barriers around a ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... should on that day desist from devastation. That they should restore to the Romans all deserters and fugitives, giving up all their ships-of-war except ten triremes, with such tamed elephants as they had, and that they should not tame any more. That they should not carry on war in or out of Africa without the permission of the Roman people. That they should make restitution to Masinissa, and form a league with him. That they should furnish corn, and pay for the auxiliaries until the ambassadors ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... the subject and stole away to play beside a fountain and lily pond, where the gold fish were tame and crowded to their hands for food; but others listened and learned surprising facts that set the thoughtful ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... Arthur was pure. Vice is so often glorified and offers such chromo tints to the eye as that many superficial folks think virtue tame and vice exhilarating. Here lies the difficulty. They look on those parts which are contiguous to vice, but are really not parts of it. In the self of vice is nothing attractive. Lying, lust, envy, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. Upon the first rumour of this intended combat, it was confidently affirmed, and is still believed, by many in both galleries, that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those parts of the audience gave it out in whisper ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... tame tiger of the excited and highly respectable Adolphus Casay, shiveringly emerging from beneath the bed-clothes he had diligently wrapped round his aching head, to deaden the incessant clamour of the iron which was entering into the soul of his sleep. A hastily-performed toilet, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... now have Mr. Boswell home; it is well that you have him; he has led a wild life. I have taken him to Lichfield, and he has followed Mr. Thrale to Bath. Pray take care of him, and tame him. The only thing in which I have the honour to agree with you is, in loving him; and while we are so much of a mind in a matter of so much importance, our other quarrels will, I hope, produce no great bitterness. I am, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... told, and many shall be; but a thousand tales shall not exhaust its treasury of romance. Earthquake and fire shall not change it, terror and suffering shall not break its glad, mad spirit. Time alone can tame the town, restrain its wanton manners, refine its terrible beauty, rob it of its nameless charm, subdue it to the commonplace. May time be merciful—may it delay its fatal duty till we have learned that to love, to forgive, to ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... our Eastern states, and has sparingly escaped from gardens, he thus refers to the reputation given it by the Roman naturalist: "It is believed to take away strife, or debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet ... if it be either put about their yokes or their necks," significantly adding, "which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe." Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped blossoms ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... don't say that! Some man'll win an' tame ye yet, for all your proud, wild ways an' little knife—'e will, dearie—'e will; maids is for ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... no anxiety with regard to clothing in a climate which rendered clothes a superfluity. In short, their every physical need was abundantly satisfied; they enjoyed perfect health, and if their adventures thus far were of a somewhat tame and commonplace description, well, what mattered it? They had not a doubt that excitement in plenty lay before them, and meanwhile their daily life was insensibly training and preparing them to cope ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... the high shelf with Abbott's History of Napoleon; but, in their day, it was far pleasanter to read the entertaining and dramatic pages of Headley, with their impassioned, stirring pictures of war and heroism, than the tame, tedious biographies that then filled the libraries. Headley's History of the War of 1812 immediately preceded his entrance to the Assembly in 1854, where his cleverness attracted the attention of his party and led to his selection for secretary ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... mouse, rat and rabbit are self-coloured, but the domesticated forms include various piebald patterns, such as spotted forms among mice, and the familiar black and white hooded and dorsal-striped pattern of some tame rats. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... speak with you?— Ah, yes, you needn't fear— While I whisper through the grating, I wouldn't have them hear. These jailers, if a body But chance to speak her name, They roll their eyes so savage, As if they meant to tame Some wild beast, and they scare me. Come nearer, nearer yet; Come near me till I whisper, ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... saw the whole herd come hopping home, as tame as sheep, and turning into the paddock, he could hardly believe his eyes. He hurried after and began to count them. He counted them over and over again, and ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... verandah, and try to attract Leoline and Hubert after her, but failing in this, she talked to the far more conversible Rose about the bullfinch that hung at the window, which loved no one but Aunt Ermine, and scolded and pecked at every one else; and Augustus, the beloved tame toad, that lived in a hole under a tree in the garden. Mrs. Curtis, considerate and tender-hearted, startled to find her daughter in the field, and wishing her niece to begin about her own affairs, talked common-place by way of filling up the time, and Rachel had her eyes free for a ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... still another way of avoiding the soliloquy, which is sometimes used with good results. It is to let Hamlet, if that happens to be the name of your character, enter with a small dog, pet falcon, mongoose, tame bear or whatever animal is most in keeping with the part, and confide in this animal such sorrows, hopes or secret history as the audience has got to know. This has the additional advantage of putting the audience immediately in sympathy with your hero. "How sweet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... texture, retentive of moisture, and requiring much cultivation, and containing, moreover, salts of iron in proportions and forms almost poisonous to plants. But there are profound resources in most clays, so that if it is difficult to tame them, it is also difficult to exhaust them. Hence a clay that has been well cultivated through several generations will generally produce a fair return for whatever crop may be put upon it. Limestone soils are usually very porous and deficient of clay, and therefore have no sustaining ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... Sun-shine seemed to beam on George's mind, as he once more spoke of home ties, to one to whom those home ties were equally dear. And gratefully did he bask in its rays! Long used to the verdant but tame, beautiful but romantic landscapes, which the part of England he resided in presented; the scenery around him, novel and picturesque, struck Sir Henry forcibly. To one who has resided long in Malta, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... his chair, and watched the other's face. For the first few pages, which contained some tame dialogue between minor characters, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... political achievements with a soundness and solidity never possessed by those of the mighty conqueror who "sought to give the mot d'ordre to the universe." If the figure of the Prussian does not loom so large on the canvas of universal history as that of the Corsican—if he did not tame a Revolution, remodel society, and reorganise a Continent—be it remembered that he made a United Germany, while Napoleon the Great left France smaller and weaker ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... the place—miners, cowboys, ranchers, adventurers, Mexicans, Indians—had gathered around the two men, delighted with the prospect of what promised to be no tame exhibition. Already several bets had been placed and critical estimates and comments on the comparative merits of the two were being made freely when a hand fell on Pat's uplifted arm. Turning ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... madness, Malice, and lust of gold! O visionary Gladness! Where hast thou lured me, where? And was it then for me, A worshipper of love, of peace, and poesy, To brawl with sworders vile, wretches who stab for hire! Was it for me to tame the restive courser's fire To shake the rein, or wield the mercenary blade! And yet, what shall I leave?—A trace that soon shall fade, Of blind and senseless zeal; of courage—idle merit!— Be dumb, my voice, be dumb! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... and bred by Tyrrheus' boys and their father Tyrrheus, master of the royal herds, and ranger of the plain. Their sister Silvia tamed him to her rule, and lavished her care on his adornment, twining his antlers with delicate garlands, and combed his wild coat and washed him in the clear spring. Tame to her hand, and familiar to his master's table, he would wander the woods, and, however late the night, return home to the door he knew. Far astray, he floated idly down the stream, and allayed his heat on the green bank, when Iuelus' [495-528]mad hounds ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... me as within a flight-shot of you, and he said he never saw a raven sit still so near living folk, and he wished it might be for good luck, for the raven is one of the wildest birds that flies, unless it be a tame one; and so I crept on and on, till I was within threescore yards of him, and then whiz went the bolt, and there he lies, faith! Was it not well shot? and, I dare say, I have not shot in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... who came From Calais with us, gaudy in array, A Negro Woman like a Lady gay, Yet silent as a woman fearing blame; Dejected, meek, yea pitiably tame, She sate, from notice turning not away, But on our proffer'd kindness still did lay A weight of languid speech, or at the same Was silent, motionless in eyes and face. She was a Negro Woman driv'n from France, Rejected like ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... the lad, poring through the dusk by taper-light, as at once a virgin, necessarily therefore the creature of solitude, yet also as the assiduous nurse of children, and patroness of the young. Her friendly intervention at the act of birth everywhere, her claim upon the nursling, among tame and wild creatures equally, among men as among gods, nay! among the stars (upon the very star of dawn), gave her a breadth of influence seemingly coextensive with the sum of things. Yes! his great mother was in touch ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... Pauline, impatient at the suspense, entered the Frenchman's "hangar" and added her blandishments to Owen's financial inducements. The gallant foreigner succumbed and a bargain was struck. He exhibited his tame bird of steel and wood and cloth with the utter pride of a mother showing off her ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... hour towards Deemouth. Hurt pride, indignation, and a certain mild revenge in contemplating Maggie's disappointment when at length she should become aware of the distinction he had gained and she had lost, were its main components. He never noted a feature of the rather tame scenery that went hurrying past him, and yet the time did not seem to go slowly, for he was astonished when the coach stopped, and he found his ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... was utter submission to the man she should love. Her ideal of happiness his happiness, and although she had no fixed idea of her home, she was positively certain she did not want lodge gates and forelock-pulling peasantry, nor tame deer inside elaborate palings, nor the white-capped nurse stiff with starch trundling a perambulator with a fat, ordinary, rosy heir to the palings, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... usually, but hunger had made these so ravenous that they would come boldly up to the column, and as quick as a buffalo was killed, or even disabled, they would fall upon the carcass and eagerly devour it. Antelope also were very numerous, and as they were quite tame —being seldom chased—and naturally very inquisitive, it was not an unfrequent thing to see one of the graceful little creatures run in among the men and be made a prisoner. Such abundance of game relieved the monotony of the march to Hackberry Creek, but still, both ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan

... was one of the pioneers of the Kennebec Valley. He had an indomitable will, and was the kind of man needed to subdue a wilderness and tame it into a home. He was a Revolutionary pensioner, having enlisted when only twelve years of age. He was too young to be put in the ranks, and was made a waiter in camp. When I was a boy, I can remember that he drove twenty miles, once a year, to Augusta, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... of hares and pheasants. He has only succeeded to the property some three or four years, and yet the head of game on the estate, and above all in the woods, has trebled or quadrupled. Pheasants by hundreds are reared under hens, from eggs bought in London, and run about the keepers' houses as tame as barn door fowls all the summer. When the first party comes down for the first battue early in October, it is often as much as the beaters can do to persuade these pampered fowls that they are wild game, whose ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... let the Jinnee see that he had not the monopoly of miracles, "since your days we have discovered how to tame or chain the great forces of Nature and compel them to do our will. We control the Spirits of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and make them give us light and heat, carry our messages, fight our quarrels ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... a morning, all the animals on his farm would run to meet and accompany him. He had to a miraculous degree a certain sympathetic power, so that all beings, men included, loved him. I have heard my mother say that as a girl she had a tame crow who was named Tom, and that he could distinctly cry the word "What?" When Tom was walking about in the garden, if called, he would reply "What?" in a ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... neighbour who broke your trees," replied Dan; "for, as I passed by Lary's cottage, his little boy was playing with some fine tame rabbits. They had none yesterday, unless Pat bought them at the fair; and I dare say he will ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie

... their glittering sides as they ran frolicking between the spears of grass or raced in troops up and down the tall shafts of the cocoanut trees. But the remarkable beauty of these little animals and their lively ways were not their only claims upon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible to fear. Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some shady place during the heat of the day, I would be completely overrun with them. If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap perhaps ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... final instructions for the regulation of affairs in his absence. However, after writing various little memos and giving many injunctions to the syces and tenants generally, concerning the care of the horses, sheep, geese, dogs, bears, tame storks, porcupines, and other live stock which belonged to the household, the traveller mounted into his sulky, with that sinking in the region of his heart which comes to all those temporarily about to leave Pura Pura's secluded calm. ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser

... finally lodged him on a sand shoal. Near this shoal was a lodge of Under Water People (S[u]'-y[e]-t[)u]p'-pi), an old man, his wife, and two daughters. This old man was very rich: he had great flocks of geese, swans, ducks, and other water-fowl, and a big herd of buffalo which were tame. These buffalo always fed near by, and the old man called them every evening to come and drink. But he and his family ate none of these. Their ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell

... twenty-fifth of May, Thelma, Lady Bruce-Errington, sat at breakfast with her husband in their sun-shiny morning-room, fragrant with flowers and melodious with the low piping of a tame thrush in a wild gilded cage, who had the sweet habit of warbling his strophes to himself very softly now and then, before venturing to give them full-voiced utterance. A bright-eyed, feathered poet he was, and an exceeding favorite with his fair ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... of paper, likely. He's a fool— always was." And he shook his fist in the horse's face, exclaiming, "By God, I'll tame you before ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... one little bottle he has the famous water which renews youth; in another, the lotion which awakens love, or cures jealousy, or changes the fright into the beauty. All the while he plays with his tame serpents, and chatters as if his tongue went of itself, while the crowd of peasants below gape at him, laugh with him, and buy from him. Listen to him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... glad to say, that Tom learned such a lesson that day, that he did not torment creatures for a long time after. And then the caddises grew quite tame, and used to tell him strange stories about the way they built their houses, and changed their skins, and turned at last into winged flies; till Tom began to long to change his skin, and have wings ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... tame kangaroo, Jumper," answered Janet, laughing. "He is a great pet; he has been out with Sandy all the morning, and is now coming to ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... what harm "In such a child?—Then I'll be calm!" The playful boy drew out a dart, Shook his fair locks, and to my heart His shaft he launch'd.—"Love is my name," He thankless cried, "I hither came "To tame thee. In thine ardent pain "Of Cupid think and young Climene."— "Ah! now I know thee, little scamp, "Ungrateful, cruel boy! Decamp!" Cupid a saucy caper cut, Skipped through the door, and as it shut, "My bow," he taunting cried, "is sound, "Thy heart, poor comrade, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... round a snow-white ram, There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers; While peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb, The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers His sober head, majestically tame, Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers His brow, as if in act to butt, and then Yielding to their small hands, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... Eastern States, and has sparingly escaped from gardens, he thus refers to the reputation given it by the Roman naturalist: "It is believed to take away strife, or debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet...if it be either put about their yokes or their necks," significantly adding, "which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe." Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... king Thakombau, and one of the high chiefs of Mbau. Upon meeting Ratu Pope every native dropped his burdens, stepped to the side of the wood-path and crouched down, softly chanting the words of the tame, muduo! wo! No one ever stepped upon his shadow, and if desirous of crossing his path they passed in front, never behind him. Clubs were lowered in his presence, and no man stood fully erect when ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... very extremity of this bitter battle, an angel of Immanuel, named Solicitude, came to my side one day and said, 'I will teach you how to tame Giant Mistake and how to ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... my grand inspiration about the colors and rigged them out. Then I dug my own pin out and put on my vest and about four o'clock the rescuing party drove up. Say, you'd have laughed to see that fight! Ham-actors in Richard the Third would have made it look tame. The Chi Yis put up a fist or two, threw a brick and then cut for the timber; and the noble Alfalfa Delts burst open the door just as I got the chorus going on ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... the caracara is heavy and slow, and it is generally an inactive, tame, and cowardly bird. It destroys young lambs, by tearing the umbilical cord; and it pursues the gallinaso till that bird is compelled to vomit up the carrion it may have recently gorged. It is said, also, that several caracaras ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... with it an audience that packed the long narrow room with one dense mass of human beings. The "California Pet" never had been so joyous, so reckless, so fascinating and audacious before. But the applause was tame and weak compared to the ironical outburst that greeted the second rising of the curtain and the entrance of the born poet of Sierra Flat. Then there was a hush of expectancy, and the poet stepped to the foot-lights and stood with his ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... return to Oxford. A few months ago it would have been, but this crisis in my life has changed me. I don't think I shall adapt myself again to those conditions. I want to work in a freer way. I had a positive zeal even for examinations; now that seems tame—well, boyish. I believe I have outgrown that stage; I feel a reluctance to go back to school. I suppose I must take my degree, and so on, but it will all ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... Mammoth Hot Springs. Hardly had we left the little town of Gardiner and gotten within the limits of the Park before we saw prong-buck. There was a band of at least a hundred feeding some distance from the road. We rode leisurely toward them. They were tame compared to their kindred in unprotected places; that is, it was easy to ride within fair rifle range of them; but they were not familiar in the sense that we afterwords found the bighorn and the deer to be familiar. During the two hours following my entry ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... England, so kindly to monarchy, forwarded the confederacy; its submission to episcopal jurisdiction; its attachment to ceremonies, to order, and to a decent pomp and splendor of worship; and, in a word, its affinity to the tame superstition of the Catholics, rather than to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... been here only a few weeks. Wait until you've spent years, and have gone through your experience of to-day half a dozen times, and you will find it tame enough." ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... up the water, and exhausted his powers of growling and raging, he went to sleep. In the morning, Titus brought him merely some fresh water and a cake of barley-bread; but in the afternoon, thinking it was now time for his pupil—who was tolerably tame after his unwonted exercise and fasting—to begin his studies, he brought with him the great book he had prepared for his use, and placed it open on the desk, which now stood before the horizontal opening between the bars already described. All the morning had been employed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... (30), an archipelago of 90 islands, Pomona the largest, lying north of the Scottish mainland, from which they are separated by the Pentland Firth, 7 m. broad. The scenery is tame, the climate is mild and moist; there are no trees, crops are poor; the chief industries are fishing and stock-raising; Kirkwall, with a cathedral, and Stromness are the chief towns. Seized from the Picts by Norse vikings, they passed to James III. as security ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... has been great," wrote Nelson, "and to that only can be attributed our unexampled success. Not even a boat could get into Marseilles or Toulon, or on the coast, with provisions; and the old saying, 'that hunger will tame a lion,' was never more strongly exemplified." In this he deceived himself, however natural the illusion. The opposition of Toulon to the Paris Government was part of a general movement of revolt, which spread throughout ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... was made of pine-branches, plastered with mud and thatched with rye-straw; a hole in the top let the smoke out, and a hole in the side let in father, mother, pigs, chickens, and children, beside a tame jackdaw, that slept on an old stool by the fireplace, and ate with Otto's nine children out of ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... paper, so that it is of no use to have a reasonable series of remarks in your mind. The specimen given above is an average one. In print nothing could be much less funny, but when the company has the spirit of "Consequences," even so tame a story as this might keep the room merry. The game is always full of the unexpected, and the people who meet each other are almost sure to be laughing-stocks. The results are often better if all the papers are handed to one player ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... of a tyrant against your own flesh and blood?" she asked. "I have been too tame a slave. To keep me away from the Court while I was young and worth looking at—to deny me amusements and admiration which are the privilege of every woman of quality—to forbid me the play-house, and make a country cousin of me by keeping me ignorant ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... herself, frowning, into a chair beside a window which overlooked the park. The landscape had a gentle charm—spreading grass, low hills, and scattered woods—under a warm September sun. But it had no particular accent, and Daphne thought it both tame and depressing; like an English society made up of Archdeacon Mountfords and their women-kind! What a futile, irritating man!—and what dull creatures were the wife and daughter!—mere echoes of their lord and master. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to—though who he is, or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies. 'There is,' it has been said, 'hardly any exaggerating the difference between civilised and uncivilised men; it is greater than the difference between a tame and a wild animal,' because man can improve more. But the difference at first was gained in much the same way. The taming of animals as it now goes on among savage nations, and as travellers who have seen it describe it, is a kind of selection. The ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... actions belong properly to the virtue to whose end they are specifically referred: thus fasting is referred specifically to the end of abstinence, which is to tame the flesh, and consequently it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... and threatened to make the abbot the next victim of his fury; but five days after, as he was riding with Nestorius, governor of Egypt, their horses began to play and prance, and the governor's horse, though otherwise remarkably tame, by {170} justling, threw Belacius from his horse, and by biting his thigh, tore it in such a manner that the general died miserably on the third day.[19] About the year 337, Constantine the Great, and his two sons, Constantius and Constans, wrote a joint letter to the saint; ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused From under ashes into sudden flame, And as an evening dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order ranged Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads. So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods embost, That no second knows nor third, And ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... While at Green Bay I procured a young fawn, and carried it to be a tenant of my garden and grounds. This animal grew to its full size, and revealed many interesting traits. Its motions were most graceful. It was perfectly tame. It would walk into the hall and dining-room, when the door was open, and was once observed to step up, gracefully, and take bread from the table. It perambulated the garden walks. It would, when the back-gate was shut, jump over a six feet ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... also difficult to be quite certain as to what is meant by a tame animal. Cockroaches usually scuttle away when they are disturbed and seem to have learnt that human beings have a just grievance against them. But many people have no horror of them. A pretty girl, clean and dainty in her ways, and devoted to all kinds of animals, used to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... manage him! And you expect me to pity you? Bless me, if I had half your advantages, what I would make of them! But if you like to be a tame wife, my dear—if you are resolved upon it, tell me so at once, and I will hold ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... on each wing; the head and neck of the latter is white, but all the other feathers as well as those on the head and neck of the drake are of a dark variegated colour. The second sort have a brown plumage, with bright green feathers in their wings, and are about the size of an English tame duck. The third sort is the blue-grey duck, before mentioned, or the whistling duck, as some called them, from the whistling noise they made. What is most remarkable in these is, that the end of their beaks is soft, and of a skinny, or more properly, cartilaginous ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... rain, its banks o'erflows, With mouth unfathomably deep, Foams, thunders, glows, All worthy of Apollo's bay, Whether in dithyrambic roll Pouring new words he burst away Beyond control, Or gods and god-born heroes tell, Whose arm with righteous death could tame Grim Centaurs, tame Chimaeras fell, Out-breathing flame, Or bid the boxer or the steed In deathless pride of victory live, And dower them with a nobler meed Than sculptors give, Or mourn the bridegroom early torn From his young bride, and ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... the poor thing was dying of hunger! It's a fact, she knew the terrors of that first night of captivity; and I maintain that, on that first night, she was flung, half-dead, into the cave. Only, there you are: the next morning she was alive! One night was enough to tame the little rogue and to make Dalbrque as handsome as Prince Charming in her eyes! For see the difference. On the films or in novels, the Happy Princesses resist or commit suicide. But in real life ... oh, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... Province of Munster especially) a recy, spirituous, fine-flavoured Cyder, very little, if at all, inferior to the best imported White Wines; and a moderate Plenty of grateful Honey-Liquors, which, with our prime Beef, Mutton, Pork, Veal, Lamb, Variety of Fowls, tame and wild; red and fallow Deer; Hares, Rabbits, Pidgeons, Pheasants, Grouse; and Partridge; wild Duck, Plover, Snipe, &c. Lake, River, Shell and Sea Fish, of all Kinds; the Produce of the Garden, (Horticulture having of late Years so vastly improved among us, that we now have many ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... and Poland, all for the pleasure of seeing the metropolis and the empress of Russia? Other princes may pursue such pastime; but the princes of the house of Brandenburg fly at a nobler quarry. Or is the King of Prussia, as a tame spectator, to reap no advantage from the troubles in Poland and the Turkish war? What is the meaning of his late conferences with the Emperor of Germany? Depend upon it these planetary conjunctions are the forerunners of great events. A few months may unfold the secret. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... cheese of the does' milk, and wine of the woodberries. She showed them the stores of honey which wild bees had made, and left in the hollow trees, the rarest plants of the forest, and the herbs that made all the creatures tame. ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne

... afraid you would be frightened," said Sara. "But you needn't be. I am making him tame. He actually knows me and comes out when I call him. Are you too frightened to ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... into our eyes at this adventure." Are we become as Hebrew Elijahs, then; so that the wild ravens have to bring us food? Truth is, there was nothing miraculous, as Wilhelmina found by and by. It was a tame raven,—not the soul of old George I., which lives at Isleworth on good pensions; but the pet raven of a certain Margravine, which lost its way among the intricate roofs here. But the incident was touching. "Well," exclaimed Wilhelmina, "in the Roman Histories I am now ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... thirty to forty tales, sketches, and poems, among which are a pretty story, by Mrs. Hofland; a Cricketing Story, by Miss Mitford, &c. There are two or three little pieces enjoining humanity to animals, and some pleasing anecdotes of monkeys and tame robins, and a few lines on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... colonists shall be sent thither from Spain, for whom various provisions are made; and it is expected that from them the Indians will learn the Spanish methods of farming. Cattle and horses are to be sent to the islands; and the farmers sent out shall be ordered to tame and breed the wild buffaloes found there. Agriculture shall be encouraged in all ways. A convent for girls should be established, and its inmates provided with husbands; and Indian women should be enabled to marry poor Spaniards. Encomiendas ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair

... the thirst for that work over there. You would play with a woman and then put her out of your heart into the street, or try to tame yourself. Which ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick

... from the life of hunting man passed into the pastoral stage, having learned to tame animals. How he came to do so, and by what motives he was actuated, is still a mystery. It may be, as M. Salomon Reinach has also suggested, that it was some curious and indefinable sense of kinship with them that led him to do so, or more probably, as the ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl

... out now dere would not be much of us left hereabouts," said Hans, lazily. "He screams good. See, now, how I shall tame him ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... the Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow; at some dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him, took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short, fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... the spirit; and all will attain representative government, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to be a necessary check on Kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate. To attain all this, however, rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over; yet the object is worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation. For what inheritance so valuable, can ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... warmth, my dear," said Lady Belamour with perfect command of temper; "I tell you I blame myself for not having recollected that a lovely maiden can tame even a savage brute, or that even in the sweet rural country walls have ears and trees have tongues. Not that any harm is done so far, nor ever will be; above all if your good father do not carry his romantic sentiments so far as to be his ruin a second time. Credit me, Betty, they ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it was a day old. The poor little thing was put in a card-board box, where it cried all the way home. I kept it in a cage made of an old box for several weeks, fearing the cat would take it for a bird, and eat it up. I call it Cocotte. It is very tame, and follows me everywhere, but its favorite place is in the kitchen closet, keeping guard over the oatmeal bag, which contains its principal food, although it will eat any kind of meat with the cats, and drinks milk ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... strolls out in his grounds, the squirrel ascends the highest tree and chatters and scolds at the unusual intrusion, while the birds fly away screaming with affright, as if pursued by a vulture. They used to be tame once, when the family inhabited the house, and listen with wonder at notes sweeter and more musical than their own. They would even feed from the hand that protected them. His dog alone seeks his ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... day. Three or four unfinished pictures leaned against the easel. Quita looked through them, aimlessly, in search of a congenial subject. But they were chiefly landscape studies; and in her present mood Nature seemed a little tame, and bloodless. Her heart cried out for something human, and she wished that Michael ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic thought, and a great flock of extraordinarily tame pigeons flutters back and forth between the stone dove-cote rising in a square tower above the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... partridges, wild ducks, widgeon, teal, capons, pullets, fowls, chickens, squab-pigeons, tame rabbits, woodcocks, snipes, larks, ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... of the Germans, without being tame, was not actually stiff, and the doughboys were able to sweep toward the second line of any position without difficulty. There, however, the Germans began to defend themselves sharply, which delayed, but did not stop the American advance. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... "My tame socialism, as you call it," she replied, "draws the line at seeing the country governed by one class of person only, and that class the one who has the least at stake ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... contrary, Gregory says (Moral. xxx, 18) that "unless we first tame the enemy dwelling within us, namely our gluttonous appetite, we have not even stood up to engage in the spiritual combat." But man's inward enemy is sin. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... : delikateco, takto tactics : taktiko. tail : vosto. tailor : tajloro. talent : talento. talk : interparolad'i, -o; konversacio. tallow : sebo. talon : ungego. tame : dresi; malsovagxa. tan : tan'i, -ilo. tankard : pokalo. tap : krano; frapeti. tape : katunrubando. tar : gudr'o, -umi. tart : torto; acida. task : tasko. taste : gust'o, -umi. tattoo : tatui. tax : imposto. tea : teo. teach : instrui, lernigi. tear : sxiri. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... a tame affair. Before we got to Z—— we met the Commandant and the Chaplain and two refugees, in Mr. Lambert's scouting-car, towed by a motor-wagon. It had broken down on the way from Lokeren. We took them on board and turned ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... perceive my friend is anxious to hear a woman speak to him as only a woman can. I will soon give way and let him be gratified; but, first, I will tell him an anecdote. A woman once told me she never saw a horse so wild that she could not tame him. I asked her how, and she answered, "Simply by whispering in his ear." Our wild friend in the gallery will probably receive some benefit listening to the voice of a woman, if his ears be only long enough to hear ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... number of irreverent hens, whose owners will be prosecuted if they do not look better after them. The other Sunday, we saw a notice posted at the front of the church relative to the great hen-scratching question. It is said that some of these tame and reclaimed birds have penetrated a foot or two into the ground for the purpose of lying, not laying, therein; and on this account it is important that their proprietors should look more (h)energetically after them. The foundation stone of St. Peter's ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... to tame horses, and to swing my sabre; and my lance will strike you a mark at sixty paces. But the art of the needle is unknown to me; it were unworthy a pupil of Elfi ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... that didst rule the angry hour, And tame the tempest's mood— Oh! send, thy Spirit forth in power O'er our dark souls ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... tickled that he's going to marry Ellen West after wanting her all his life. If I was Ellen—but then, I'm not, and if she is satisfied I can very well be. I heard her say years ago when she was a schoolgirl that she didn't want a tame puppy for a husband. There's nothing tame about ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... one. Moreover, pirate, you said just now that you thought I was made of better stuff. I don't know what stuff I am made of—I never thought much about that subject; but I'm quite certain of this—that I am made of such stuff as the like of you shall never tame, though ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... tropic birds flew by us, the first that we had seen since our separation from the ship. About noon, two noddies alighted on the gaff, and the little native climbed the mast after them; but though they are generally so tame, or so stupid, as to permit themselves to be approached and taken with the hand, these flew away before he could seize them. We hailed the appearance of these birds as a favourable omen, neither species being often seen at ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... massive external debt relief resulting from Egypt's participation in the Gulf war coalition - helped Egypt improve its macroeconomic performance during the 1990s. Sound fiscal and monetary policies through the mid-1990s helped to tame inflation, slash budget deficits, and build up foreign reserves, while structural reforms such as privatization and new business legislation prompted increased foreign investment. By mid-1998, however, the pace of structural reform slackened, and ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the minnows playing through the water, in and out of the recesses of the rocks or the thickets of the seaweed. There is no end of the pleasant sights. And day after day the creatures will grow more tame, the serpula will not dart back into his case when you approach, nor the pecten close his beautiful shell as your shadow passes over it. Moreover, the habits of the creatures grow more entertaining as you become familiar with them, and even the dull oyster ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... ever rise above nature or sink below her? Did she not turn on Jerusalem as upon Sodom, upon St. Anthony in his desert as upon Nero in his seraglio? Does she not always cry in brutal triumph: "I am here still, at the bottom of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me nor tame me nor thwart me; I made the world, I rule it, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... insatiable, and therefore far more deadly than hunger.... A boast is made that ninety millions of rabbits are reared for the consumption of our nation. Ninety million rabbits sent out at large to nibble the young shoots of the growing crops—each of whom destroys and wastes ten times what a tame rabbit would eat in a hutch—are boasted of as an increase of our supplies! If twenty million of these reach the town markets, it is much; how many beside are cruelly massacred with no profit to man! and how many beside, with unhappy hares, foxes, rats, stoats, and weasels, are held ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do even the most startling novelties grow tame and spiritless to these ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... at the intrusion, but, overcome by the sight of Elizabeth, laid his club and his keys humbly at her feet. On posts along the route were placed the offerings of Sylvanus, of Pomona, of Ceres, of Bacchus, of Neptune, of Mars, and of Phoebus. From Arthur's court tame the Lady of the Lake, begging the queen to deliver her from the Knight without Pity. Fawns, satyrs, and nymphs brought their greetings, while an Echo replied to the addresses of welcome. Amusements of every variety occupied ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... are habituated to the rigid framework of sectarian creeds will find such a religion as this too indefinite and elastic. No doubt it is so, but only because its ambition is not to shackle the Infinite and tame it for domestic use; but rather to help our consciousness to emancipate itself from materialism. It is as indefinite as the morning, and yet as luminous; it calls our thoughts, feelings, and actions ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... mysterious life of the lonely forest,—the grandeur of Katahdin or Ktaadn, that hermit-mountain,—and the wild and adventurous navigation of those Northern water-courses whose perils make the boating of the Adirondack region seem safe and tame. The book is also more unexceptionably healthy in its tone than any of its predecessors, and it is pleasant to find the author, on emerging from his explorations, admitting that the confines of civilization afford, after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... accommodate both. As to the conditions which you say, S'r, you intend to exact from my brother, you will undoubtedly state them to him himself; and cannot expect I should meddle with them or be party to them. Neither you nor he can imagine that I am quite so tame an idiot as to enter into bonds for persons of his recommendation. If the office is his, he must be answerable for it, and for all the persons he employs in it. I protest against every thing that is not my own ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various

... with the tame brown owl, I find that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... George Wither's verses will grow upon the reader of them, tame as they are sure to appear at first. His Hallelujah, or Britain's Second Remembrancer, from which I have been quoting, is well worth possessing, and can be procured ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... stories. Novels are being sold by the five thousand which have far less ability in characterization or in grouping. The persons remain in one's memory as real individuals, which is saying a good deal; the dialogue, though excessive in quantity, is neither tame nor flippant; and there is an attractive compactness in the plot, which is all comprised within one house in an unknown city. But this plot soon gets beyond the author's grasp, nevertheless; she creates individualities, and can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... Reginald. "The brute is tame, though I only captured her this morning. See! I became her surgeon, and she is grateful for the service I ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... built up in this way. "Who still wanteth to rule?" Zarathustra asks in the "Prologue". "Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome." This is rapidly becoming everybody's attitude to-day. The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together with such democratic interpretations of life as those suggested by Herbert Spencer, are signs of a physiological condition which is the reverse of that bounding ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... and had altered myself a bit more. Meanwhile I got a billet of several sorts on one of the loveliest spots that ever I struck on all my travels. The place was a vineyard, but it overhung the sea, and I got taken on as tame sailorman and emergency bottle-washer. The wages were the noble figure of a lira and a half, which is just over a bob, a day, but there were lashings of sound wine for one and all, and better wine to bathe in. And for eight whole months, my boy, I was an absolutely honest man. ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... see in the streets, or along the country roads, are tame. Such a thing as a real wild horse is hardly to be found anywhere, save in certain places in Texas, California, and parts of South America. Elsewhere, the horse is tame enough, and no one can remember, neither is it told in any history or story ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various



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