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Submissive vs Tame - What's the difference?

submissive | tame |

As nouns the difference between submissive and tame

is that submissive is one who submits while tame is water-source.

As an adjective submissive

is meekly obedient or passive.

submissive

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • one who submits

    • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Meekly obedient or passive.
  • * 1756 , Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke , G. Bell & sons, page 314:
    • The powerful managers for government were not sufficiently submissive to the pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimes from a confidence in their own strength natural and acquired; sometimes from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the country, which gave them a consideration independent of the court.
  • * 1913 , Edward Lee Thorndike, Educational Psychology , Teachers college, Columbia university, page 92:
    • If the human being who answers these tendencies assumes a submissive behavior, in essence a lowering of head and shoulders, wavering glance, absence of all preparations for attack, general weakening of muscle tonus, and hesitancy in movement, the movements of attempt at mastery become modified into attempts at the more obvious swagger, strut and glare of triumph.
  • * 2007 , Brian Watermeyer, Disability and Social Change: A South African Agenda , HSRC Press, page 269:
    • Once oppression has been internalised, little force is needed to keep us submissive .

    Derived terms

    * submissively (adverb) * submissiveness (noun)

    Synonyms

    * docile * meek * slavish * timid * obedient

    Antonyms

    * dominant, domineering (ruling ) * defiant, rebellious (ignoring )

    tame

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) (m), from (etyl) .

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Not or no longer wild; domesticated
    • They have a tame wildcat.
  • (chiefly, of animals) Mild and well-behaved; accustomed to human contact
    • The lion was quite tame .
  • Not exciting
    • This party is too tame for me.
    For a thriller, that film was really tame .
  • Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
  • * Roscommon
    • tame slaves of the laborious plough
  • (mathematics, of a knot) Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.
    • Quotations
    * (English Citations of "tame")
    Synonyms
    * (not exciting) dull, insipid
    Antonyms
    * (not wild) wild * (mild and well-behaved) gentle * (not exciting) exciting * (mathematics) wild
    Derived terms
    * tamely * tameness

    Verb

  • to make something
    • He tamed the wild horse.
  • to become
    • Derived terms
    * tamer

    External links

    * ("tame" on Wikipedia)

    Etymology 2

    Compare (etyl) .

    Verb

    (tam)
  • (obsolete, UK, dialect) To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.
  • * Fuller
    • 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

    * * * * English ergative verbs ----