Word.ws English Dictionary

mien

/miːn/

mien noun: demeanor; facial expression or attitude, especially one which is intended by its bearer.

Noun

mien (countable and uncountable, plural miens)

  1. Demeanor; facial expression or attitude, especially one which is intended by its bearer.
    • Gentlest Guardians marked serene / His early hope, his liberal mien; […]1847, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Threnody”, in Poems, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, →OCLC, page 238
    • Beauty, like all divine gifts, is everywhere to be seen by the eye of the faithful admirer of nature; and, like all spirits, she is scarcely to be described by words. Her countenance and mien, her path, her hue and carriage, often surpass expression, and soothe the enthusiast into reverie and...1856, Joseph Turnley, The Language of the Eye, →OCLC, page 111
  2. (countable) A specific facial expression.
    • It’s hard to say which is worse: the press-on smiles favored by many a ballet dancer, or the stony “I’m going to pretend this isn’t happening to me” miens often found in contemporary troupes like White Road.2007 February 10, Claudia La Rocco, “Stony Miens and Sad Hearts”, in New York Times

Proper noun capitalized: Mien

Mien

  1. A group of related languages spoken by the Yao people.

mien meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

mien in Urdu

mien, physiognomy
طلعت tal'at
mien, demeanor
چہرہ cihra

mien in Bengali

ভাবভঙ্গি, চালচলন, মুখভঙ্গি, চেহারা

mien in Malayalam

look, appearance, express-ion
മുഖഭാവം, രൂപം, മുഖം, ചര്യ, പെരുമാറ്റം, നടപ്പ്

mien in Kannada

ಮುಖಭಾವ, ಮುಖಭಂಗಿ, ಮುಖಮುದ್ರೆ, ಚಹರೆ, ತೋರ‍್ಪು, ನಡತೆ

Examples of mien in a sentence

  • Her countenance and mien, her path, her hue and carriage, often surpass expression, and soothe the enthusiast into reverie and silence.1856, Joseph Turnley, The Language of the Eye, →OCLC, page 111:
  • Jenny's coming o'er the green, / Fairer form was never seen, / Winning is her gentle mien; / Why do I love her so?1860, Stephen Foster, “Jenny's coming o'er the green”:
  • [T]aking the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr.1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Incident at the Window”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and...

Forms of mien

pluralmiens

Origin of mien

From French mine (“appearance”) (whence also Danish mine and German Miene), perhaps from Breton min (“face of an animal”), or from Latin minio (“to redden”).

Words formed from mien

Phrases with mien

Words that rhyme with mien

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mien

What does mien mean?
Mien means demeanor; facial expression or attitude, especially one which is intended by its bearer.
What is mien in Urdu?
Mien in Urdu is طلعت (tal'at), چہرہ (cihra). See Mien meaning in Urdu.
How do you use mien in a sentence?
Her countenance and mien, her path, her hue and carriage, often surpass expression, and soothe the enthusiast into reverie and silence.
What part of speech is mien?
Mien can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mien?
Mien is pronounced /miːn/.
What is the plural of mien?
The plural of mien is miens.

Words near mien in the dictionary

  1. Mielke
  2. Mielkes
  3. Mielno
  4. mielogram
  5. mieloperoxidase
  6. mien
  7. Mien-yang
  8. Miena
  9. Mienchih
  10. miened
  11. Mienic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mien (page history and authors); Mien (page history and authors); طلعت (Urdu) (page history and authors); mien (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mien (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); mien (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)-Vealhurl-mien.wav.

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