- (British English) (North American English cheap)not willing to give or share things, especially money
- She's always been mean with money.
Extra ExamplesTopics Moneyc2, Personal qualitiesc2- He's rather mean when it comes to spending money on the children.
- They were too mean to buy the kids proper beds.
- Don't be so mean with the chocolate sauce.
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- mean (to somebody) (of people or their behaviour) unkind, for example by not letting somebody have or do something
- Don't be so mean to your little brother!
Extra ExamplesTopics Personal qualitiesc2- He's so mean to his mother!
- I thought it was really mean of him not to let her use the car.
- That was a pretty mean trick.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryverbs- be
- feel
- seem
- …
- extremely
- fairly
- very
- …
- to
- (especially North American English) likely to become angry or violent
- That's a mean-looking dog.
- He has a mean streak in him.
- (informal) very good and showing skill
- He's a mean tennis player.
- She plays a mean game of chess.
- [only before noun] (specialist) average; between the highest and the lowest, etc.
- the mean temperature
- (formal) (of a person's understanding or ability) not very great
- This should be clear even to the meanest intelligence.
- (literary) poor and dirty in appearance
- mean houses/streets
- (old-fashioned) born into or coming from a low social class
- These rights apply even to the meanest labourer.
not generous
unkind
angry/violent
showing skill
average
intelligence
poor
Word Originadjective senses 1 to 4 and adjective senses 6 to 8 Middle English, shortening of Old English gemǣne, of Germanic origin, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin communis ‘common’. The original sense was ‘common to two or more people’, later ‘inferior in rank’, leading to senses (6-8) and a sense ‘ignoble, small-minded’, from which senses (1) to (3) (which became common in the 19th cent.) arose. adjective sense 5 Middle English: from Old French meien, from Latin medianus ‘middle’, from medius ‘mid’.
Idioms
See mean in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee mean in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishbe no mean…
- (approving) used to say that somebody is very good at doing something
- His mother was a painter, and he's no mean artist himself.
Check pronunciation:
mean