Word.ws English Dictionary

mean

/miːn/UK/miːn/

mean verb: to intend, to plan (to do); to have as one's intention.

Verb

mean (third-person singular simple present means, present participle meaning, simple past and past participle meant)

  1. (transitive) To intend, to plan (to do); to have as one's intention.
    • 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.
    Synonyms:
    intend
  2. (intransitive) To have as intentions of a given kind.
    • Don't be angry; she meant well.
  3. (passive, regional, transitive) 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?
  5. (transitive) To convey (a given sense); to signify, or indicate (an object or idea).
    • 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 waterworks”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, →ISSN, page 5
    Synonyms:
    convey, indicate, signify
  6. (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, Ransom Notes, Famous Last Words, and Other Forms of Minimalist Communication, New York...
  7. (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
  8. (transitive) 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.
  9. (transitive) 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.
  10. (usually) To be of some level of importance.
    • That little dog meant everything to me.
    • Formality and titles mean nothing in their circle.
  11. (Ireland, UK, regional) 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 Patrick Simsone (manuscript); printed in William King Tweedie, editor, Select Biographies, volume 1, Edinburgh, 1845, page 111
    • “ 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 the Scottish border, fourth edition, volume 2, Edinburgh, page 247

Adjective (1)

mean (comparative meaner, superlative meanest)

  1. (obsolete) Common; general.
  2. (archaic) Of a common or low origin, grade, or quality; common; humble.
    • a man of mean parentage
    • a mean abode
  3. Low in quality or degree; inferior; poor; shabby.
    • a mean appearance
    • a mean dress
  4. Without dignity of mind; destitute of honour; low-minded; spiritless; base.
    • You hurt her feelings - that was a mean thing to do.
    • It was mean of you to steal that little girl's piggy bank.
    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. (UK) 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, miserable, miserly
  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.
  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 fleet carriers.2020 February 23, Drachinifel, 8:48 from the start, in The Drydock - Episode 082, archived from the original on 08 Aug 2022
    Synonyms:
    harsh, damaging, fierce
  10. (colloquial) 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 entire system by the end of the day.2003 July, Debra Phillips, The High Price of a Good Man: A Novel, New York City: St. Martin's, page 29
    • 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, Margaret Loudon, A Fatal Footnote, New York City: Berkley, →ISBN, page 109
  11. (colloquial) Accomplished with great skill; deft; hard to compete with.
    • Your mother can roll a mean cigarette.
    • He hits a mean backhand.
    Synonyms:
    deft, skillful, top-notch
  12. (childish, informal, often) Difficult, tricky.
    • This problem is mean!

Adjective (2)

mean (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.1960 April 7, “Communist China's Achievements in Numerical Weather Forecasting”, in 氣象學報, volume XXX, number 3, United States Joint Publications Research Service, →OCLC, archived from the original on...
  2. (obsolete) 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 staturea. 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 New Arcadia], London...

Noun

mean (plural means)

  1. (also, now chiefly in the plural form means) 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
  2. (obsolete, singular) 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 Reader", in The Works of John Jewel (1845 ed.)
    • 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 knights and burgoses of the parliament, should be blown up with powder. 2. That...1606, The Trials of Robert Winter, Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Rob. Keyes, Thomas Bates, and Sir Everard Digby, at Westminster, for High Treason, being Conspirators in...
  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 less1996, Harris Rackham, The Nicomachean Ethics, translation of original by Aristotle, page 118
  4. (historical) 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 factors for the survey.1997, Angus Deaton, The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy, World Bank Publications, page 51
    • 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 Gymnastics from Beyond the Edge, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 246
    1. 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 original on 28 Aug 2017
  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 John Farrar, An Elementary Treatise on Arithmetic, third edition, page 102
    • 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 means are 4 and 5.1999, Dawn B. Sova, How to Solve Word Problems in Geometry, McGraw-Hill,, →ISBN, page 85

Proper noun capitalized: MEAN

MEAN

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, web development) Acronym of MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, Node.js: a software stack for developing web sites with both client-side and server-side use of JavaScript.

mean meaning in Hindi, Telugu, Tagalog and Arabic

mean in Hindi

to intend; plan on doing
चाह cāh
to have intentions of some kind
चाह cāh
to intend (something) for a given purpose or fate
कामना kāmnā
to convey, indicate
अर्थ arth

mean in Telugu

to intend; plan on doing
పధకము వేయు padhakamu vēyu, అనుకోవడము anukōvaḍamu
to have intentions of some kind
అర్ధం ఏమిటి ardhaṁ ēmiṭi
to convey, indicate
అనుకొనుట anukonuṭa
of a word: to signify
ఫలితము phalitamu

mean in Tagalog

to intend; plan on doing
sadyain, kusain, tikisin
to intend (something) for a given purpose or fate
inilaan
to convey, indicate
ibig sabihin
of a word: to signify
mangahulugan, ipakahulugan

mean in Arabic

to convey, indicate
عَنَى ʕanā
of a word: to signify
عَنَى ʕanā, قَصَدَ qaṣada
intending to cause harm, successfully or otherwise
لَئِيم laʔīm, خَسِيس ḵasīs
the statistical value
مُتَوَسِّط mutawassiṭ
More languagesFewer languages
mean in Malay
min
mean in Indonesian
bermaksud, berarti, rata-rata, jahat
mean in Persian
معنی کردن ma'ni kardan, میانه miyâne
mean in Thai
ตั้งใจ dtâng-jai, หมายถึง măaitĕung, หมายความ măaikwaam
mean in Vietnamese
nghĩa là, có nghĩa là

Examples of mean in a sentence

  • I meant to take the car in for a smog check, but it slipped my mind.
  • The authors meant a challenge to the status quo.
  • Do you mean to say you regret it after all?
  • 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: study sheds light on Antarctic English slang”, in The Guardian:
  • And that, together with the inherent yuckiness of the subject, means that many old sewers have been neglected and are in dire need of repair.2014 June 14, “It’s a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891, →ISSN:
  • 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] M[acock]...

All 40 example sentences with mean

Synonyms of mean

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of mean

Forms of mean

Verb
third-person singular presentmeans
present participlemeaning
past participlemeant
pastmeant
Adjective
comparativemeaner
superlativemeanest
alternative formmyn
Noun
pluralmeans

Past tense of mean: meant

Plural of mean: means

Origin of mean

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.

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.

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.

Words formed from mean

Phrases with mean

58 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with mean

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mean

What does mean mean?
Mean means to intend, to plan (to do); to have as one's intention.
What is mean in Hindi?
Mean in Hindi is चाह (cāh), कामना (kāmnā), अर्थ (arth). See Mean meaning in Hindi.
How do you use mean in a sentence?
I meant to take the car in for a smog check, but it slipped my mind.
What part of speech is mean?
Mean can be a verb, an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mean?
Mean is pronounced /miːn/ (UK).
What is the past tense of mean?
The past tense of mean is meant.

Words near mean in the dictionary

  1. mealymouthedness
  2. mealymouths
  3. Mealys
  4. mealywing
  5. mealywings
  6. mean
  7. mean absolute deviation
  8. mean absolute deviations
  9. mean anomalies
  10. mean anomaly
  11. mean as a snake

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mean (page history and authors); MEAN (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: en-us-mean.ogg.

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