TAMENESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does tameness mean? 

• TAMENESS (noun)
  The noun TAMENESS has 2 senses:

1. the quality of being vapid and unsophisticated

2. the attribute of having been domesticated

  Familiarity information: TAMENESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TAMENESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being vapid and unsophisticated

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

jejuneness; jejunity; tameness; vapidity; vapidness

Hypernyms ("tameness" is a kind of...):

dullness (the quality of lacking interestingness)

Derivation:

tame (flat and uninspiring)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The attribute of having been domesticated

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

domestication; tameness

Hypernyms ("tameness" is a kind of...):

flexibility; tractability; tractableness (the trait of being easily persuaded)

Attribute:

tame; tamed (brought from wildness into a domesticated state)

Antonym:

wildness (an intractably barbarous or uncultivated state of nature)

Derivation:

tame (very docile)

tame (brought from wildness into a domesticated state)

 Context examples 

“You’re not going away in an unkind spirit, Hudson, I hope,” said my father, with a tameness which made my blood boil.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All sign of the Indians had passed away, but animal life was more frequent, and the tameness of the creatures showed that they knew nothing of the hunter.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?" ere long he inquired wistfully—wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the result rather of weakness than of will.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mr. Yates, indeed, exclaimed against his tameness and insipidity; and the day came at last, when Mr. Rushworth turned to her with a black look, and said, Do you think there is anything so very fine in all this?

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He took notice of a general tradition, that Yahoos had not been always in their country; but that many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together upon a mountain; whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known; that these Yahoos engendered, and their brood, in a short time, grew so numerous as to overrun and infest the whole nation; that the Houyhnhnms, to get rid of this evil, made a general hunting, and at last enclosed the whole herd; and destroying the elder, every Houyhnhnm kept two young ones in a kennel, and brought them to such a degree of tameness, as an animal, so savage by nature, can be capable of acquiring, using them for draught and carriage; that there seemed to be much truth in this tradition, and that those creatures could not be yinhniamshy (or aborigines of the land), because of the violent hatred the Houyhnhnms, as well as all other animals, bore them, which, although their evil disposition sufficiently deserved, could never have arrived at so high a degree if they had been aborigines, or else they would have long since been rooted out; that the inhabitants, taking a fancy to use the service of the Yahoos, had, very imprudently, neglected to cultivate the breed of asses, which are a comely animal, easily kept, more tame and orderly, without any offensive smell, strong enough for labour, although they yield to the other in agility of body, and if their braying be no agreeable sound, it is far preferable to the horrible howlings of the Yahoos.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)