teem

verb

1. To be stocked to overflowing.

   “But well he knew his teeming pangs were vain, Till Midwife Dryden eas’d his labouring Brain;”

   “his mind teeming with schemes of future deceit to cover former villainy”

2. To be prolific; to abound; to be rife.

   “Fish teem in this pond.”

   “The steel works, with their Siemens furnaces, the rail-rolling mill with its enormous single-cylinder engine fitted with Corliss valve gear, and the forge in which were installed the great steam hammers and hydraulic presses—these were teeming with interest, and the best way to pick up information was to work with the millwrights.”

   “Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins.”

3. To fall prolifically.

   “"Troth, it's teemin' powerful this instiant up there in the mountains. 'Twill be much if you land home afore it's atop of you; […]"”

   “... rain teemed from the overcast skies, cold and penetrating, and life began to look like one enormous funeral procession.”

   “The snow teemed like white bugs against Mark's windshield for the entire long, silent, thirty-five-mile drive out to her new-rich fantasy- "The Farm" that she shared with my stepfather, Bill : […]”

   “[As] rain teemed down, the passenger peered out from the tinted window.”

   “Rain teemed from a moonless sky. Splashing in white dashes on the boating lake. Puddles grew at the feet of a man in a crash helmet and a long dark riding coat. Rain streamed down his goggles as he watched Miriam's window.”

4. (obsolete)To bring forth young, as an animal; to produce fruit, as a plant; to bear; to be pregnant; to conceive; to multiply.

   “If she must teem, / Create her child of spleen.”

5. (archaic)To empty.

   “[The banksman] also puts the full tubs to the weighing machine, and thence to the skreens, upon which he teems the coals. It is also his duty to keep an account of the quantity of coals and stones drawn each day.”

   ““Are you sure they’re good lodgings?” she asked. “Yes—yes. Only—it’s a winder when you have to pour your own tea out—an’ nobody to grouse if you teem it in your saucer and sup it up. It somehow takes a’ the taste out of it.””

6. To pour (especially with rain)
7. To pour, as steel, from a melting pot; to fill, as a mould, with molten metal.
8. (Ireland, Scotland)To drain the water from (boiled potatoes etc.).
9. (obsolete, rare)To think fit.

   “Ah, said he, thou hast confessed and bewrayed all, I could teem it to rend thee in pieces”

noun

1. A downpour (of rain).

   “... a teem of rain that poured down so copiously it ran in surface streamlets over the plains. I may literally say we came to anchor this evening in a sheet of water, the prairie, as far as we could see, presenting the same aqueous[…]”

   “... under the great teems of rain, and houldin' up the grandest new green umbrella ever you laid eyes on. Fine it was entirely, and an iligant body I was consaitin' meself, goodness forgive me.”

   “... a teem of rain and the geranium tremens.”

   “... a teem of rain, and blast of wind; and Katie felt a terrible, deep cold, as if it had got down into her bones and she would never be warm again.”