meek
/miːk/US/mik/
meek adjective: humble, non-boastful, modest, meager, or self-effacing.
Adjective
meek (comparative meeker, superlative meekest)
- Humble, non-boastful, modest, meager, or self-effacing.
- Blessed are the meeke: for they shall inherit the earth.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 5:5
- Mrs. Wickam was a meek woman...who was always ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else...1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “Chapter 8”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC
- Submissive, dispirited, cowed.
- What if they were wolves instead of lambs? They'd eat her all the sooner if she was meek to them. Fight or be eaten.1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- compliant, passive, abject, servile, amenable, biddable, complaisant, controllable, docile, governable
Verb
meek (third-person singular simple present meeks, present participle meeking, simple past and past participle meeked)
Proper noun capitalized: Meek
Meek
- A surname.
- An unincorporated community in Holt County, Nebraska, United States.
meek meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
meek in Tamil
- பணிவான
meek in Urdu
- meek, gentle, noble, upstanding
- شریف śarīf
meek in Bengali
- নম্র, বিনয়ী, মৃদু, শান্ত
meek in Malayalam
- ശാന്തമായ, സൗമ്യതയുളള, വിനയശീലമുളള
More languagesFewer languages
- meek in Kannada
- ಸೌಮ್ಯ, ತಾಳ್ಮೆಯ, ಸಾಧುಸ್ವಭಾವದ, ನಮ್ರ
- meek in Punjabi
- ਹਲੀਮ halīm, غریب ġarīb, ਗ਼ਰੀਬ ġarīb
- meek in Indonesian
- rendah hati
- meek in Persian
- فروتن forutan, سربهزیر sar-be-zir
Examples of meek in a sentence
- When confronted by opposition his reaction was to bluster, which often cowed the meek.
- That will ultimately culminate in meek, apologetic and docile behavioral reactions or sometimes in aggressive behavior.
- Some masters can be quite kind if you're meek and tractable.
Synonyms of meek
25 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of meek
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | meeker |
| superlative | meekest |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | meeks |
| present participle | meeking |
| past participle | meeked |
| past | meeked |
Origin of meek
From Middle English meek, meke, meoc, probably a borrowing from Old Norse mjúkr (“soft; meek”), from Proto-Germanic *meukaz, *mūkaz (“soft; supple”), from Proto-Indo-European *mewg-, *mewk- (“slick, slippery; to slip”); compare Old English smēag (“subtle, stealthy, etc.”) and smūgan. Cognate with Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk mjuk (“soft”), Norwegian Bokmål myk (“soft”), and Danish myg (“supple”), Dutch muik (“soft, overripe”), dialectal German mauch (“dry and decayed, rotten”), Mauche (“malanders”). Compare as well Welsh mwyth (“soft, weak”), Latin ēmungō (“to blow one's nose”), Tocharian A muk- (“to let go, give up”), Lithuanian mùkti (“to slip away from”), Ancient Greek μύσσομαι (mússomai, “to blow the nose”), Sanskrit मु॒ञ्चति॑ (muñcáti, “to release, let loose”).
Words formed from meek
Words that rhyme with meek
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- leak
- seek
- bespeak
- pique
- tweak
- reek
- sleek
- geek
- peek
- squeak
- week
- wreak
- boutique
- clique
- creek
- forspeak
- gleek
- unique
- bleak
- cacique
- creak
- critique
- deke
- eek
- eke
- fleak
- on fleek
- respeak
- Tajik
- teak
- technique
- tongue-in-chic
- chic
- cleek
- desqueak
- leek
- malik
- midweek
- misspeak
- physique
- pratique
- shriek
- speke
- streek
- Zeke
- -speak
- Adam's Peak
- advertique
Questions about meek
- What does meek mean?
- Meek means humble, non-boastful, modest, meager, or self-effacing.
- What is meek in Tamil?
- Meek in Tamil is பணிவான. See Meek meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is meek?
- Meek can be an adjective, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce meek?
- Meek is pronounced /miːk/ (UK).
Words near meek in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: meek (page history and authors); Meek (page history and authors); meek (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); شریف (Urdu) (page history and authors); meek (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); meek (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); meek (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); غریب (Punjabi) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-meek.wav.
Cite this entry: “meek.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/meek. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.