mean

Etymology 1

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”). Related to moan.

verb

1. To intend.
   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 Baddeck this summer.
      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.
   2. (intransitive) To have as intentions of a given kind.
      Don't be angry; she meant well.
   3. (transitive, usually in passive) 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.https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/i_mean%20I%20mean
      Your reasoning seems needlessly abstruse, complex, and verbose for me. I mean, could you dumb it down for my sake?
2. To convey (a meaning).
   1. (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?
      There are four weekly services to Pyongyang (; Pingrang; hard-sleeper ¥1164-1214, soft-sleeper ¥1692-1737). The K27 and K28 both leave twice a week from Beijing Train Station, meaning there’s a train on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. 2013 May, China (Lonely Planet), 13th edition, →OCLC, page https://archive.org/details/travel-guides-lp/china-13/page/n185/
      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. 2013-06-01, “A better waterworks”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 5 (Technology Quarterly)
   2. (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. This in turn leads to the somewhat more formal guideline of including a term if it is attested and idiomatic. 2010, Alexander Humez, Nicholas Humez, Rob Flynn, Short Cuts: A Guide to Oaths, Ring Tones, Ransom Notes, Famous Last Words, and Other Forms of Minimalist Communication, Oxford University Press US, page 33
   3. (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 is a little different, if you know what I mean.
3. (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.
4. (transitive) To cause or produce (a given result); to bring about (a given result).
   One faltering step means certain death.
   It was a goal that meant West Ham won on their first appearance at Wembley in 31 years, in doing so becoming the first team since Leicester in 1996 to bounce straight back to the Premier League through the play-offs. May 19, 2012, Paul fletcher, “Blackpool 1-2 West Ham”, in BBC Sport
   One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains.[…]But out of sight is out of mind. 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. 2014-06-14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891
5. (usually with to) To be of some level of importance.
   That little dog meant everything to me.
   Formality and titles mean nothing in their circle.

verb

1. (Ireland, UK regional) To lament.
   Thanne morned Mede · and mened hire to the kynge / To haue space to speke · spede if she myȝte. c. 1385, William Langland, Piers Plowman, section III
   They were forced to mean our estate to the Queen of England. 1560 (1677), Spottiswood Hist. Ch. Scot. iii. (1677), page 144
   If you should die for me, sir knight, There's few for you will meane, … 1803, Sir Walter Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, page 276
   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. 1845, Wodrow Society, Select Biographies

Etymology 2

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”). 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).

adj

1. (obsolete) Common; general.
2. (now rare) 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.
   a mean motive
   It was mean of you to steal that little girl's piggy bank.
   Prince John: Your foe has bloodied you, sir knight. Will you concede defeat? You fight too well to die so mean a death. Will you not throw in your lot with me instead? Ivanhoe: That would be an even meaner death, Your Grace. 1952, Ivanhoe
5. Of little value or worth; worthy of little or no regard; contemptible; despicable.
6. (chiefly 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.
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. 23 February 2020, Drachinifel, 8:48 from the start, in The Drydock - Episode 082, archived from the original on 2022-08-08
10. (colloquial) Accomplished with great skill; deft; hard to compete with.
    Your mother can roll a mean cigarette.
    He hits a mean backhand.
    A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs? [title] 2017-10-06, Claire Martin, “A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
11. (informal, often childish) Difficult, tricky.
    This problem is mean!

Etymology 3

table 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.

adj

1. Having the mean (see noun below) as its value; average.
   The mean family has 2.4 children.
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

noun

1. (now chiefly in the plural) A method or course of action used to achieve some result.
   You may be able, by this mean, to review your own scientific acquirements. c. 1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Essays
   Philosophical doubt is not an end, but a mean. 1860, William Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics
   Mr Obama produced an only slightly less ambitious goal for deficit reduction than the House Republicans, albeit working from a more forgiving baseline: $4 trillion over 12 years compared to $4.4 trillion over 10 years. But the means by which he would achieve it are very different. 14 Apr 2011, “Rival visions”, in The Economist
2. (obsolete, in the 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 the whole royal issue male should be destroyed. S. That they would lake into their custody Elizabeth and Mary the king's daughters, and proclaim the lady Elizabeth queen. 4. That they should feign a Proclamation in the name of Elizabeth, in which no mention should be made of alteration of religion, nor that they were parties to the treason, until they had raised power to perform the same; and then to proclaim, all grievances in the kingdom should be reformed. 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 the Gunpowder-Plot
   a. 1623, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi Apply desperate physic: / We must not now use balsamum, but fire, / The smarting cupping-glass, for that's the mean / To purge infected blood, such blood as hers.
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, 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 less 1996, Harris Rackham, The Nicomachean Ethics, translation of original by Aristotle, page 118
   1875, William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, editors, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Little, Brown and Company, volume 1, page 10, s.v. Accentus Ecclesiasticus, It presents a sort of mean between speech and song, continually inclining towards the latter, never altogether leaving its hold on the former; it is speech, though always attuned speech, in passages of average interest and importance; it is song, though always distinct and articulate song, in passages demanding more fervid utterance.
4. (music, now 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. (statistics) The average of a set of values, calculated by summing them together and dividing by the number of terms; the arithmetic mean.
6. (mathematics) 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, page 246
   The generalized power means include power means, certain Gini means, in particular the counter-harmonic means. 2003, P. S. Bullen, Handbook of Means and Their Inequalities, Springer, page 251
7. (mathematics) 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,, page 85
   {{quote-book|en|year=2007|author=Carolyn C. Wheater|title=Homework Helpers: Geometry|publisher=Career Press,|isbn=1564147215|page=99