different between soft vs tame

English

Etymology

From Middle English softe, from Old English s?fte, alteration of earlier s?fte (“soft”), from Proto-West Germanic *samft? (“level, even, smooth, soft, gentle”) (compare *s?miz (“agreeable, fitting”)), from Proto-Indo-European *semptio-, *semtio-, from *sem- (“one, whole”). Cognate with West Frisian sêft (“gentle; soft”), Dutch zacht (“soft”), German Low German sacht (“soft”), German sanft (“soft, yielding”), Old Norse sœmr (“agreeable, fitting”), samr (“same”). More at seem, same.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: s?ft, IPA^(key): /s?ft/
  • (Conservative RP) IPA^(key): /s??ft/
• (General American) enPR: sôft, IPA^(key): /s?ft/
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) IPA^(key): /s?ft/, enPR: s?ft
• Rhymes: -?ft

Adjective

soft (comparative softer, superlative softest)

1. Easily giving way under pressure.

2. (of cloth or similar material) Smooth and flexible; not rough, rugged, or harsh.
3. (of a sound) Quiet.
4. Gentle.

   There was a soft breeze blowing.

   • c. 1533, William Tyndale, An exposicion upon of Mathew

     The meek or soft shall inherit the earth.

5. Expressing gentleness or tenderness; mild; conciliatory; courteous; kind.
   • 1815, William Wordsworth, To a Highland Girl

     A face with gladness overspread, / Soft smiles, by human kindness bred.

6. Gentle in action or motion; easy.
7. Weak in character; impressible.
   • 1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica

     The deceiver soon found this soft place of Adam's.

8. Requiring little or no effort; easy.
   • 1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Beach of Falesá

     Before that they had been a good deal on the move, trekking about after the white man, who was one of those rolling stones that keep going round after a soft job.

9. Not bright or intense.

10. Having a slight angle from straight.

11. (linguistics) Voiced; sonant.
    • 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

      DH represents the voiced (soft) th of English these clothes.

12. (linguistics, rare) voiceless
13. (linguistics, Slavic languages) palatalized
14. (slang) Lacking strength or resolve; not tough, wimpy.

15. (of water) Low in dissolved calcium compounds.

16. (Britain, colloquial) Foolish.
    • 1621, Robert Burton, The Essential Anatomy of Melancholy

      He made soft fellows stark noddies, and such as were foolish quite mad.

17. (physics) Of a ferromagnetic material; a material that becomes essentially non-magnetic when an external magnetic field is removed, a material with a low magnetic coercivity. (compare hard)
18. (of a person) Physically or emotionally weak.
19. Incomplete, or temporary; not a full action.

20. (Britain, of a man) Effeminate.
    • 1650, Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living

      A longing after sensual pleasures is a dissolution of the spirit of a man, and makes it loose, soft, and wandering.

21. Agreeable to the senses.
22. Not harsh or offensive to the sight; not glaring or jagged; pleasing to the eye.
    • 1673, Edward Browne, A Brief Account of some Travels in Hungaria, Styria, Bulgaria, Thessaly, Austria, Serbia, Carynthia, Carniola, and Friuli

      The sun, shining upon the upper part of the clouds […] made the softest lights imaginable.

23. (photography, of light) Made up of nonparallel rays, tending to wrap around a subject and produce diffuse shadows.
24. (computing) Emulated with software; not physically real.

25. (of a drug) Not likely to cause addiction.

Synonyms

• (giving way under pressure): see Thesaurus:soft
• (of a cloth): non-abrasive, fluffy
• (gentle): gentle, light, nesh
• (of a sound): quiet
• (lacking strength or resolve): meek, mild, wimpy, nesh
• (foolish): daft, foolish, silly, stupid

Antonyms

• (giving way under pressure): hard, resistant, solid, stony
• (of a cloth): abrasive, scratchy
• (gentle): harsh, rough, strong
• (acute): hard
• (of a sound): loud
• (lacking strength or resolve): firm, strict, tough
• (of water): hard
• (foolish): sensible

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• mollify

Interjection

soft

1. (archaic) Be quiet; hold; stop; not so fast.

Adverb

soft (comparative more soft, superlative most soft)

1. (obsolete) Softly; without roughness or harshness; gently; quietly.
   • There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.

Noun

soft (plural softs)

1. A soft or foolish person; an idiot.
   • 1859, George Eliot, Adam Bede Part I, Chapter 9

     It'll do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o' your own, if you've got a soft to drive you: he'll soon turn you over into the ditch.

2. (motorsports) Ellipsis of soft tyre (A tyre whose compound is softer than mediums, and harder than supersofts.)
3. (colloquial) A soft sound or part of a sound.
   • 2012, Sam McGuire, Paul Lee, The Video Editor's Guide to Soundtrack Pro (page 103)

     The expander doesn't really make the louds louder and the softs softer in one step […]

Czech

Etymology

Borrowed from English soft(ware).

Noun

soft m

1. (colloquial) software, program
   • 18 March 1999, CD-R 74min X 80min, Group cz.comp.ibmpc:

     Zajimalo by mne, zda jsou tyto CD schopna pracovat na plnou kapacitu s normalnimi vypalovackami a beznym softem nebo je na ne potreba mit extra vypalovadlo i soft?

   • 19 March 2009, Zalohovaci SW, Group cz.talk:

     Pokud t?ch dat máte víc, pak tím TARem sta?í zálohovat základ systému a zbytek ?ešit zálohovacím softem, kterej umí d?lit archiv na n?kolik pásek.

   • 2 April 2010, gsm modul / telefon, Group cz.comp.linux:

     ma nekdo nejake zkusenosti s takovym zarizenim ci softem kterym to ovladat?

Declension

Further reading

• soft in Kartotéka Novo?eského lexikálního archivu
• soft in Slovník spisovného jazyka ?eského, 1960–1971, 1989

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English soft.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s?ft/

Noun

soft m (plural softs)

1. (sexuality) soft porn
2. (computing, uncountable) Software.
3. (computing, countable) A piece of software.

Adjective

soft (plural softs)

1. softcore (pornography)

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from English soft.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?s?ft/

Adjective

soft (invariable)

1. soft (tone etc; temporary (computing))

References

Polish

Etymology

Borrowed from English soft(ware).

Noun

soft m inan

1. (colloquial) software, program

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: t?m, IPA^(key): /te?m/
• Rhymes: -e?m
• Homophone: Thame

Etymology 1

From Middle English tame, tome, weak inflection forms of Middle English tam, tom, from Old English tam, tom (“domesticated, tame”), from Proto-West Germanic *tam (“tame”), from Proto-Germanic *tamaz (“brought into the home, tame”), from Proto-Indo-European *demh?- (“to tame, dominate”). Cognate with Scots tam, tame (“tame”), Saterland Frisian tom (“tame”), West Frisian tam (“tame”), Dutch tam (“tame”), Low German Low German tamm, tahm (“tame”), German zahm (“tame”), Swedish tam (“tame”), Icelandic tamur (“tame”).

The verb is from Middle English tamen, temen, temien, from Old English temian (“to tame”), from Proto-West Germanic *tammjan, from Proto-Germanic *tamjan? (“to tame”).

Adjective

tame (comparative tamer, superlative tamest)

1. Not or no longer wild; domesticated.

   Antonym: wild

2. (chiefly of animals) Mild and well-behaved; accustomed to human contact.

   Synonym: gentle

3. (figuratively) Of a person, well-behaved; not radical or extreme.
4. Not exciting.

   Synonyms: dull, flat, insipid, unexciting

   Antonym: exciting
5. Crushed; subdued; depressed; spiritless.
   • a. 1685, Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon, Paraphrase on the 148th Psalm

     tame slaves of the laborious plough

6. (mathematics, of a knot) Capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.

   Antonym: wild

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:tame.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

tame (third-person singular simple present tames, present participle taming, simple past and past participle tamed)

1. (transitive) To make (an animal) tame; to domesticate.

2. (intransitive) To become tame or domesticated.
   • 2006, Gayle Soucek, Doves (page 78)

     Tambourines are shy birds and do not tame easily.

3. (transitive) To make gentle or meek.

   to tame a rebellion

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• tame on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

From Middle English tamen (“to cut into, broach”). Compare French entamer.

Verb

tame (third-person singular simple present tames, present participle taming, simple past and past participle tamed)

1. (obsolete, Britain, dialect) To broach or enter upon; to taste, as a liquor; to divide; to distribute; to deal out.
   • 1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State

     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

• AEMT, ATEM, Atem, META, Meta, Team, Tema, mate, maté, meat, meta, meta-, team

Inari Sami

Etymology

From Proto-Samic *?ëm?.

Noun

ta?e

1. glue

Inflection

Further reading

• Koponen, Eino; Ruppel, Klaas; Aapala, Kirsti, editors (2002-2008) Álgu database: Etymological database of the Saami languages?^[2], Helsinki: Research Institute for the Languages of Finland

Japanese

Romanization

tame

1. R?maji transcription of ??

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old English tam, tom, from Proto-Germanic *tamaz (“tame”).

Adjective

tame

1. (of animals) tame, domesticated
2. (of plants) cultivated, domesticated
3. overcome, subdued
4. (of people) meek, compliant
5. (anatomy, medicine, of a fistula) inner, interior

Alternative forms

• tam; tom, tome (early Southwest and Southwest Midlands)

Descendants

• English: tame
• Scots: tame

References

• “t?me, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Etymology 2

Verb

tame (third-person singular simple present tameth, present participle tamynge, first-/third-person singular past indicative and past participle tamed)

1. Alternative form of tamen (“to cut, carve”)

Etymology 3

Noun

tame (uncountable)

1. (Northern) Alternative form of tome (“freetime”)

Norwegian Nynorsk

Adjective

tame

1. (non-standard since 2012) definite singular of tam
2. (non-standard since 2012) plural of tam

Swedish

Adjective

tame

1. absolute definite natural masculine form of tam.

Anagrams

• meta, team, tema