Toom

adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A piece of waste ground where rubbish is deposited. Scottish
  2. 2
    Vacant time, leisure. uncountable, usually

    "He had exhausted Bath, but his connections and introductions made the transition easy. There was toom for two in the capital."

Verb
  1. 1
    To empty; teem. dialectal, rare
Adjective
  1. 1
    Empty; bare. Northern-England, Scotland, dialectal, rare

    "Gin she was toom afore, she's toomer now, Her heart was like to loup out at her mou'."

Synonyms

All synonyms
cleanemptyempty as a pauper's purseempty as the tomb on easterleerunfilled

Example

More examples

"They asked me what Toom looked like."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English toom, tom, from Old English tōm (“empty”), from Proto-West Germanic *tōm(ī), from Proto-Germanic *tōm(ij)az (“free, available, empty”), from Proto-Indo-European *doma- (“to tame”), *dema- (“to build”). Cognate with Danish and Swedish tom (“empty, vacant”), Icelandic tómur (“empty”).

Etymology 2

From Middle English toom, tome, tom, from Old Norse tóm (“vacant time, leisure”), from Proto-Germanic *tōmą (“vacant time, leisure”). Related to Old Norse tómr (“vacant, empty”).

Related phrases

toom-handed

More for "toom"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.