Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Teem
I recently wrote, “Nineteenth century London seems to have been teeming with street urchins.” Honesty compels me to admit that I had to look up the spelling of “teeming,” which means something swarming or overflowing with a large number of things. Masses always seem to teem. I have often heard it used and often used it myself, but I wasn’t sure of the correct spelling. As it turns out, “teem” and “team” are interesting homophones with distinct meanings, yet related roots.
Spelled “team” the word is a noun that means a group or squad with a common activity. “Teem” is an intransitive verb almost always used with the preposition “with,” such as “the busy streets teem with activity” or “the lake teems with fish.” Both words spring from related Old English words dealing with off-spring. “Teem” the verb, originally meant “to bring forth offspring” while “team” the noun, meant “offspring, lineage or group of draft animals.“ “Team” is still used archaically to refer to a brood of farm animals, but both words no longer have much to do with offspring-related connotations.
Flour and flower are similarly related homophones much harder to confuse. It’s unlikely we would make bread with flower. Yet, the words not only have the same root, they were originally the same word. Flour was used to describe the finest ground part of a plant in terms of food while flower was the finest part of the plant or its blossom. The Old French “flor” also meant both a flower or blossom and ground meal or fine grain. The English word was spelled “flower” until “flour” became the accepted form around 1830, fostering peace for that piece of verbal confusion.
