(a) A family, tribe; native stock; also fig.; barn ~, q.v.; (b) issue, offspring, progeny; also fig.; barn ~, q.v.; temen teme(s, to breed offspring, have children; (c) the capacity for childbearing; temes at-old, aged beyond childbearing; (d) fig. fulfillment; comen to god ~, to come to good fulfillment, come to good issue; (e) an associated group of persons, a troop; (f) a team of draft animals; hors and net and al the hole ~, fig. everybody; tol ~, law ?a fee for pasturing livestock; (g) a draft pole; the main beam of a plow; ~ lond, a piece or unit of arable land;—also coll.; thre temes lengthe, the length of three draft poles; (h) as a term of association for poultry or swans; (i) ~ ele, ?young eels used as food.

Law [The original OE sense of teme as a step in a legal proceeding whereby one or more of the parties disputing the ownership of certain property refer to the original seller of the property as warrantor seems to have been lost even in the earliest ME documents. The following senses then evolved:] (a) the right, attendant upon ownership of land, to adjudicate cases of disputed ownership of property among one's tenants or bondsmen and to collect the forfeitures and fees arising from such cases;—usu. in lists of proprietorial rights and privileges; tol and ~; (b) the penalty for not producing a warrantor in a suit over disputed property; (c) ?the legal situation in which the owner of certain disputed property has no proof of ownership; (d) the offspring of one's serfs or bondsmen as a property right [prob. by confusion with sense 1.(b)].