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Teem and team are not just homophones, they are also etymological kin. Teem comes from Old English tīman or tǣman, which originally meant "to bring forth offspring" or "to give birth to.” That word is related to the ancestor of team, the Old English noun tēam, meaning "offspring, lineage, or group of draft animals." Team can still be used to refer to a brood of young animals, especially pigs or ducks, but both teem and team have otherwise largely left their offspring-related senses behind.
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What is the difference between the verbs teem and team?
If you want to describe an overflowing abundance of something, the word you are looking for is teem. We often see reference to "the teeming masses," "streets teeming with activity," or "forests teeming with life." You want the word team if you are trying to describe pairing two or more things in a coordinated ensemble ("she teamed the oxen together"), or forming some kind of partnership or association ("we are teaming with another organization this year").
Synonyms
Examples of teem in a Sentence
Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 4 Oct. 2024
If so, Have We Met is the warehouse metropolis of Synecdoche, New York: cavernous and self-referential, teeming yet desolate, with the threat of a fire around any corner.
—Pitchfork, 1 Oct. 2024
This has produced a toxic environment in the streets, where women dread having to use certain public transportation (Cairo’s teeming buses, unlike the metro, are not segregated) or even walk down a busy street.
—Emily Dyer, Foreign Affairs, 27 Jan. 2014
It’s all given a tuneful sheen that suggests the work of a teeming pop-rock hive-mind at work.
—Jon Dolan, Rolling Stone, 10 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for teem 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'teem.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Teem.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teem. Accessed 4 Nov. 2024.
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