mean

To intend.

Adjective obsolete

  1. Common; general.
  2. Of a common or low origin, grade, or quality; common; humble.
    • a man of mean parentage
    • a mean abode
    • Thinke you I weigh this treaſure more than you? Not all the Gold in Indias welthy armes, Shall buy the meaneſt ſouldier in my traine. - c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The...
  3. Low in quality or degree; inferior; poor; shabby.
    • a mean appearance
    • a mean dress

    Synonyms: cheap grotty ass bad base below par bottom-shelf BTEC bum cheap and nasty cheapshit cheesy chintzy coffee-and crap crappo crappy craptastic crapperific craptabulous craptacular cruddy crummy dogwater

  4. Without dignity of mind; destitute of honour; low-minded; spiritless; base.
    • a mean motive
    • It was mean of you to steal that little girl's piggy bank.
    • Can you imagine I ſo mean could prove, / To ſave my Life by changing of my Love? - 1665 (first performance), John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, or, The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. […], London: […] J[ohn]...

    Synonyms: base ignoble selfish unkind vile

    Antonyms: lofty noble honorable

  5. Of little value or worth; worthy of little or no regard; contemptible; despicable.
    • The Roman legions and great Caesar found / Our fathers no mean foes. - 1708, [John Philips], “(please specify the page)”, in Cyder. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], →OCLC:
  6. Ungenerous; stingy; tight-fisted.
    • He's so mean. I've never seen him spend so much as five pounds on presents for his children.

    Synonyms: as tight as Dick's hatband cheap cheeseparing chintzy close close as wax close-fisted illiberal mean miserable miserly narrow-fisted niggardly nipcheese parsimonious peddling penny-wise penny-pinching penurious scrooge-like scrubby shabby still got one's communion money stingy

  7. Disobliging; pettily offensive or unaccommodating.
  8. Intending to cause harm, successfully or otherwise; bearing ill will towards another.
    • Watch out for her: she's mean. I said good morning to her, and she punched me in the nose.

    Synonyms: cruel malicious nasty wicked

  9. Powerful; fierce; strong.
    • It must have been a mean typhoon that levelled this town.
    • […]in the context of ships available at the time, they were aircraft carrier - fleet carriers. Now, granted, they may not have been the biggest and largest and meanest fleet carriers around, but they certainly were...

    Synonyms: harsh damaging fierce

  10. Hearty; spicy.
    • We were sitting in Poetta’s candlelit kitchen waiting for some of her gut-burning chili to get done. Everybody that knows Poetta knows that she makes a mean chili that if you eat it by lunchtime, it can clean out your...
    • She wasn’t the most accomplished cook in the world but she cold make a mean stew, she knew how to roast a chicken, and she could whip up eggs at least three different ways. - 2021 July 5, Margaret Loudon, A Fatal...
  11. Accomplished with great skill; deft; hard to compete with.
    • Your mother can roll a mean cigarette.
    • He hits a mean backhand.
    • A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs? [title] - 2017 October 6, Claire Martin, “A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

    Synonyms: deft skillful top-notch

  12. Difficult, tricky.
    • This problem is mean!

Origin

From Middle English mene, imene, from Old English mǣne, ġemǣne (“common, public, general, universal”), from Proto-West Germanic *gamainī, from Proto-Germanic *gamainiz (“common”), from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“to change, exchange, share”). Doublet of common. Cognate with West Frisian mien (“general, universal”), Dutch gemeen (“common, mean”), German gemein (“common, mean, nasty”), Danish gemen, Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌼𐌰𐌹𐌽𐍃 (gamains, “common, unclean”), Latin commūnis (“shared, common, general”) (Old Latin comoinem). For a similar change in definition, see vulgar.

Forms

meaner meanest

Synonyms

inconsiderate insensitive halfhearted mean mean-spirited merciless petty pitiless poor-spirited ruthless thoughtless tight surly uncaring unfriendly ungrateful unkind unkindly unthinking

Antonyms

compassionate kindly nice

Hyponyms

cruel despicable malevolent malicious unjust

Related

grim harsh humorless stern

Derived

bemean demean lean and mean mean as a snake meandom meanfem mean girl meanie meanish mean machine mean-mouth mean-mug meanness mean people suck mean-spirited meanspo mean streak mean streets mean white mean world syndrome meany no mean feat semimean

Adjective not comparable

  1. Having the mean as its value; average.
    • The mean family has 2.4 children.
    • In the mountain region of A-erh-t'ai Shan and Hsiang-t'ien Shan⁷, if the mean west wind velocity is five meters per second, the high tendency at 700mb on the anterior mountain slope may exceed 40 meters in 12 hours. -...
  2. Middling; intermediate; moderately good, tolerable.
    • I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is […]. - , II.ii.2
    • being of middle age and a mean stature - a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the folio)”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The...
    • according to the fittest style of lofty, mean, or lowly - [1644], [John Milton], Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib, [London]: […] [Thomas Underhill and/or Thomas Johnson], →OCLC:

Origin

From Middle English meene, borrowed from Old French meien (French moyen), Late Latin mediānus (“that is in the middle, middle”), from Latin medius (“middle”). Cognate with mid. For the musical sense, compare the cognate Italian mezzano. Doublet of median and mizzen.

Forms

myn

Synonyms

inconsiderate insensitive halfhearted mean mean-spirited merciless petty pitiless poor-spirited ruthless thoughtless tight surly uncaring unfriendly ungrateful unkind unkindly unthinking

Antonyms

compassionate kindly nice

Hyponyms

cruel despicable malevolent malicious unjust

Related

median mediate mediation mediator mediocre mediocrity medium grim harsh humorless stern

Derived

brake mean effective pressure intermean local mean sidereal time mean absolute deviation mean anomaly mean distance mean distance between failure mean free path mean free time mean hitting time mean motion mean planet mean proportional mean ratio mean sea level mean sidereal time mean solar day mean solar time mean square mean standard mean sun mean survival time mean time meantime

Noun

  1. A method or course of action used to achieve some result.
    • To say truth, it is a meane full of uncertainty and danger. - 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 5, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
    • You may be able, by this mean, to review your own scientific acquirements. - c. 1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Essays:
    • Philosophical doubt is not an end, but a mean. - 1860, William Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics:
  2. An intermediate step or intermediate steps.
    • Verily in this treatise this hath been mine only purpose; and the mean to bring the same to effect hath been such as whereby I studied to profit wholesomely, not to please delicately. - a. 1563, Thomas Harding, "To the...
    • That it was lawful and meritorious to kill and destroy the king, and all the said hereticks. — The mean to effect it, they concluded to be, that, 1. The king, the queen, the prince, the lords spiritual and temporal, the...
    • a. 1623, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi Apply desperate physic: / We must not now use balsamum, but fire, / The smarting cupping-glass, for that's the mean / To purge infected blood, such blood as hers.
  3. Something which is intermediate or in the middle; an intermediate value or range of values; a medium.
    • Then will not this constitution be a kind of mean between aristocracy and oligarchy? - 1997, John Llewelyn Davies with David J. Vaughan, Republic, translation of original by Plato, page 263:
    • as a mean, it implies certain extremes between which it lies, namely the more and the less - 1996, Harris Rackham, The Nicomachean Ethics, translation of original by Aristotle, page 118:
    • 1875, William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, editors, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Little, Brown and Company, volume 1, page 10, s.v. Accentus Ecclesiasticus, It presents a sort of mean between speech and song,...
  4. The middle part of three-part polyphonic music; now specifically, the alto part in polyphonic music; an alto instrument.
    • Of these [rattles] they have Base, Tenor, Countertenor, Meane, and Treble. - 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 147:
  5. Any function of multiple variables that satisfies certain properties and yields a number representative of its arguments; or, the number so yielded; a measure of central tendency.
    • Note that (1.41) is simply the probability-weighted mean without any explicit allowance for the stratification; each observation is weighted by its inflation factor and the total divided by the total of the inflation...
    • Luckily, even though the arithmetic mean is unusable, both the harmonic and geometric means settle to precise values as the amount of data increases. - 2002, Clifford A. Pickover, The Mathematics of Oz: Mental...
    • The generalized power means include power means, certain Gini means, in particular the counter-harmonic means. - 2003, P. S. Bullen, Handbook of Means and Their Inequalities, Springer, →ISBN, page 251:

    Hypernyms: average

    Coordinate Terms: median mode

    1. (statistics) The average of a set of values, calculated by summing them together and dividing by the number of terms.

      • While the average age of the rioter was 27.8 years, the mean age of the nonrioter was 38.1. - 1980 June 22, Richard Morin, “Profile of a Rioter: Under 30, Male, Frustrated”, in The Washington Post, archived from the...

      Synonyms: arithmetic mean average

      Hypernyms: average

      Coordinate Terms: median mode geometric mean harmonic mean quadratic mean weighted mean

  6. Either of the two numbers in the middle of a conventionally presented proportion, as 2 and 3 in 1:2=3:6.
    • ...if four numbers be in proportion, the product of the first and last, or of the two extremes, is equal to the product of the second and third, or of the two means. - 1825, Silvestre François Lacroix, translated by...
    • Using the means-extremes property of proportions, you know that the product of the extremes equals the product of the means. The ratio t/4 = 5/2 can be rewritten as t:4 = 5:2, in which the extremes are t and 2, and the...
    • In #92;frac#123;18#125;#123;27#125;#61;#92;frac23, the product of the means is 2#92;cdot27, and the product of the extremes is 18#92;cdot3. Both products are 54. - 2007, Carolyn C. Wheater, Homework Helpers: Geometry,...

    Synonyms: geometric mean mean proportional

Forms

means myn

Hypernyms

measure of central tendency measure of location sample statistic

Related

spread range

Derived

absolute mean arithmetic-geometric mean arithmetic mean Cesàro mean Chisini mean contraharmonic mean generalised f-mean generalized f-mean geomean geometric mean golden mean grand mean harmonic mean Heronian mean Hölder mean logarithmic mean meanless means population mean power mean quadratic mean quasi-arithmetic mean regression to the mean regression toward the mean

Verb

  1. To intend.
    • I didn't mean to knock your tooth out.
    • I mean to go to Arévalo in Spain this summer; I’ve been meaning to tell you for weeks, but I’ve just found the time.
    • I meant to take the car in for a smog check, but it slipped my mind.

    Synonyms: intend

    1. (transitive) To intend, to plan (to do); to have as one's intention.

    2. (intransitive) To have as intentions of a given kind.

      • Don't be angry; she meant well.

    3. (transitive, usually in passive) To intend (something) for a given purpose or fate; to predestine.

      • Actually this desk was meant for the subeditor.
      • Man was not meant to question such things.

    4. (transitive) To intend an ensuing comment or statement as an explanation.

      • Your reasoning seems needlessly abstruse, complex, and verbose for me. I mean, could you dumb it down for my sake?
  2. To convey (a meaning).
    • The sky is red this morning—does that mean we're in for a storm?
    • An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic the way real kidneys cleanse blood and eject impurities and surplus water as urine. - 2013 June 1, “A better...

    Synonyms: convey indicate signify

    1. (transitive) To convey (a given sense); to signify, or indicate (an object or idea).

    2. (transitive) Of a word, symbol etc: to have reference to, to signify.

      • What does this hieroglyph mean?
      • A term should be included if it’s likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means. - 2010, Alexander Humez, Nicholas Humez, Rob Flynn, quoting Wiktionary, Short Cuts: A Guide to Oaths, Ring Tones,...
      • Americans, for example, call newcomers to Antarctica “fingies”, which comes from FNGs – a borrowed military abbreviation that means “Fucking New Guy”. - 2024 June 20, Eva Corlett, “Fidlets, fingies and riding a doo:...

    3. (transitive) Of a person (or animal etc): to intend to express, to imply, to hint at, to allude.

      • I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.
      • He’s a little different, if you know what I mean.

      Synonyms: hint imply get at

  3. To have conviction in (something said or expressed); to be sincere in (what one says).
    • Does she really mean what she said to him last night?
    • Say what you mean and mean what you say.
  4. To cause or produce (a given result); to bring about (a given result).
    • One faltering step means certain death.
    • This breakthrough will mean that we spend less on electricity bills.
    • It was a goal that meant West Ham won on their first appearance at Wembley in 31 years, in doing so becoming the first team since Leicester in 1996 to bounce straight back to the Premier League through the play-offs. -...

    Synonyms: bring about cause lead to result in

  5. To be of some level of importance.
    • That little dog meant everything to me.
    • Formality and titles mean nothing in their circle.
  6. To lament.
    • All the tyme of his sickness he never said, “Alace!” or meaned any pain, whilk was marvellous. Never man died in greater peace of mind or body. - 1619, Archibald Simson, A true record of the life and death of Mister...
    • “ If you should die for me, sir knight, “ There’s few for you will mane, “ For many a better has died for me, “ Whose graves are growing green. - 1810, Walter Scott (gatherer), “Proud Lady Margaret”, in Ministrelsy of...

    Synonyms: grieve mourn afterthink becry begrieve bemoan bemourn bewail beweep condole deplore elegize grieven keen lament mean pine repent sigh sorrow wail wayment

Origin

From Middle English menen (“to intend; remember; lament; comfort”), from Old English mǣnan (“to mean, complain”), Proto-West Germanic *mainijan, from Proto-Germanic *mainijaną (“to mean, think; complain”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyn- (“to think”), or perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *meyno-, extended form of Proto-Indo-European *mey-. Germanic cognates include West Frisian miene (“to deem, think”) (Old Frisian mēna (“to signify”)), Dutch menen (“to believe, think, mean”) (Middle Dutch menen (“to think, intend”)), German meinen (“to think, mean, believe”), Old Saxon mēnian. Indo-European cognates include Old Irish mían (“wish, desire”) and Polish mienić (“to signify, believe”). Non-Indo-European cognates include Finnish mainita (“to mention”), Finnish meinata (“to mean, to plan, to intend”) Estonian mainima (“to mention”), Northern Sami máinnastit (“to tell”). Related to moan.

Forms

means meaning meant

Derived

and I don't mean maybe how do you mean if you know what I mean if you see what I mean I mean like one means it meanable mean business mean everything to meanless mean the whole world to mean the world to mean to mean to say mean well mismean nah mean no means no sore boob means more boob this means war treat 'em mean to keep 'em keen unmean well-meaning whaddayamean