Word.ws English Dictionary

demean

/ˌdiːˈmiːn//dɪˈmiːn/

demean verb: to debase; to lower; to degrade.

Verb (1)

demean (third-person singular simple present demeans, present participle demeaning, simple past and past participle demeaned)

  1. (transitive) To debase; to lower; to degrade.
    • It was, of course, Mrs. Sedley's opinion that her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 6, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
    • I liked to feel him attempt to demean me when I was sure there was no way he actually could.2026 June 12, Emily Ratajkowski, “Mother F*cker”, in The Cut
  2. (transitive) To humble; to humiliate.
  3. (transitive) To mortify.

Verb (2)

demean (third-person singular simple present demeans, present participle demeaning, simple past and past participle demeaned)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To manage; to conduct; to treat.
    • But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter.1644, John Milton, Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England, London: [s.n.], →OCLC
  2. (archaic, transitive) To conduct; to behave; to comport; followed by the reflexive pronoun.
    • they have demean'd themselves
      Like men born to renown by life or death.c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
    • They answered […] that they should demean themselves according to their instructions.1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, (please specify |book=I to XVI), in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed...

Noun (1)

demean (usually uncountable, plural demeans)

  1. (obsolete, transitive, usually) Management; treatment.
    • Pursu'd him streight, in mynd to bene ywroken / Of all the vile demeane, and vsage bad1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 18
  2. (obsolete, transitive, usually) Behavior; conduct; bearing; demeanor.
    • ‘When thou hast all this doen, then bring me newes / Of his demeane […].’1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • with grave demean and solemn vanity1739, Gilbert West, A canto of the Fairy Queen (later called On the Abuse of Travelling)

Noun (2)

demean (plural demeans)

  1. (transitive) demesne.
  2. (transitive) resources; means.

Verb (3)

demean (third-person singular simple present demeans, present participle demeaning, simple past and past participle demeaned)

  1. (transitive) To subtract the mean from (a value, or every observation in a data set).
    • Concerning FE estimation, it makes no difference whether you demean the data with unit-specific means computed on (balanced) T observations per unit, or with unit-specific means computed on (unbalanced) Tᵢ observations per unit.2013, Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Katrin Golsch, Alexander W. Schmidt, Applied Panel Data Analysis for Economic and Social Surveys, page 177

demean meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

demean in Urdu

برتاؤ کرنا, بگاڑنا, گھٹانا, گرانا, نیچا کرنا

demean in Bengali

মর্যাদাহানি করা, ছোট করা, কারো সম্মান কমিয়ে দেওয়া

demean in Malayalam

നിന്ദിക്കുക, അന്തസ്സു കുറയ്ക്കുക, ഹീനപ്പെടുത്തുക, താഴ്ത്തുക

demean in Kannada

ಕೀಳಾಗಿಸು, ಹೀನಾಯವಾಗಿ ವರ್ತಿಸು, ಅಲ್ಪವಾಗಿಸು, ತುಚ್ಛವಾಗಿಸು, ಕಿಳ್ಮಾಡು, ಕೀಳುಮಾಡು

Synonyms of demean

26 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of demean

Forms of demean

Verb
third-person singular presentdemeans
present participledemeaning
past participledemeaned
pastdemeaned
Noun
pluraldemeans

Past tense of demean: demeaned

Origin of demean

(1595) From de- + mean (“lowly, base, common”), from Middle English mene, aphetic variation of imene (“mean, base, common”), from Old English ġemǣne (“mean, common”). Compare English bemean.

From Middle English demenen, demeinen, from Anglo-Norman demener, from Old French demener, from de- + mener (“to conduct, lead”), from Latin mināre, from minārī (“to threaten”).

Variant of demesne.

Words formed from demean

Words that rhyme with demean

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about demean

What does demean mean?
Demean means to debase; to lower; to degrade.
What is demean in Urdu?
Demean in Urdu is برتاؤ کرنا, بگاڑنا, گھٹانا. See Demean meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is demean?
Demean can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce demean?
Demean is pronounced /dɪˈmiːn/ (UK).
What is the past tense of demean?
The past tense of demean is demeaned.

Words near demean in the dictionary

  1. Dembski
  2. Dembskis
  3. Demchok
  4. demcizumab
  5. deme
  6. demean
  7. demeanance
  8. demeane
  9. demeaned
  10. demeaner
  11. demeaners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: demean (page history and authors); demean (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Demean (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); demean (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); demean (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Mélange a trois-demean.wav.

Cite this entry: “demean.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/demean. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.