Word.ws English Dictionary

unmean

unmean adjective: not mean (all senses).

Adjective

unmean (comparative more unmean, superlative most unmean)

  1. (rare) Not mean (all senses).
    • The Age of Innocence is based on an Edith Wharton novel and set in the very unmean streets of upper-crust New York, circa 1870.1999, Martin Scorsese, Peter Brunette, Martin Scorsese: Interviews, page 188
    • But this whole time, all you've been doing is judging me, making not unmean comments about my new friends, about the guys I'm dating, about how much I drink, go out—everything—as if you don't approve.2008, Sherri Rifkin, LoveHampton, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 247
    Synonyms:
    kind, agreeable, generous

Verb

unmean (third-person singular simple present unmeans, present participle unmeaning, simple past and past participle unmeant)

  1. (rare) To reverse, cancel, or negate what was intentionally communicated.
    • The play works to unmean meaning by a double dislocation. It uses expectation to undermine expectation both of everyday 'reality' and of theatrical genre.2007, Ralph Yarrow, Franc Chamberlain, Sacred Theatre, page 114
    • ... just as Steinian non-sense derives its power to “unmean” from the rigidly semantic context of most discursive forms2011, Maria Damon, Postliterary America: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries, page 83

Examples of unmean in a sentence

  • They are so unmean, so just and so kind.2014, Martin Bowman, Battlefield Bombers: Deep Sea Attack, page 8:
  • So the tightrope these unmean men must walk drew taut.2010, John Lennard, Of Sex and Faerie: Further Essays on Genre Fiction, page 65:
  • I'd meant everything I ever said to her, and I didn't know how to unmean it.2015, CD Reiss, Shuttergirl:

Synonyms of unmean

Forms of unmean

Adjective
comparativemore unmean
superlativemost unmean
Verb
third-person singular presentunmeans
present participleunmeaning
past participleunmeant
pastunmeant

Origin of unmean

From un- (“not”) + mean.

From un- (“reverse, opposite”) + mean.

Questions about unmean

What does unmean mean?
Unmean means not mean (all senses).
How do you use unmean in a sentence?
They are so unmean, so just and so kind.
What part of speech is unmean?
Unmean can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near unmean in the dictionary

  1. unmaximizes
  2. unmaximizing
  3. unmayoral
  4. unmayorlike
  5. unmealy
  6. unmean
  7. unmeandering
  8. unmeaning
  9. unmeaningful
  10. unmeaningfully
  11. unmeaningly

Source and license

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