Definition of "mean"

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.

2012 May 19, 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 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891

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

Thinke you I weigh this treaſure more than you?Not all the Gold in Indias welthy armes,Shall buy the meaneſt ſouldier in my traine.

c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, (please specify the page)

After every qualification of property had been laid aside, the armies of the Roman emperors were still commanded, for the most part, by officers of liberal birth and education; but the common soldiers, like the mercenary troops of modern Europe, were drawn from the meanest, and very frequently from the most profligate, of mankind.

1776, Edward Gibbon, chapter 1, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […]

Can you imagine I ſo mean could prove, / To ſave my Life by changing of my Love?

1665, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour […]‎, London: Printed by J.M. for H. Herringman, published 1667, Act IV, scene iv, page 50

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

The story struck the depressingly familiar note with which true stories ring in the tried ears of experienced policemen. No one queried it. It was in the classic pattern of human weakness, mean and embarrassing and sad.

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 20, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus

The Roman legions and great Caesar found / Our fathers no mean foes.

1708, [John Philips], “(please specify the page)”, in Cyder. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […]

[…] 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.

2020 February 23, Drachinifel, 8:48 from the start, in The Drydock - Episode 082‎, archived from the original on 8 August 2022

We were sitting in Poetta’s candlelit kitchen waiting for some of her gut-burning chili to get done. Everybody that knows Poetta knows that she makes a mean chili that if you eat it by lunchtime, it can clean out your entire system by the end of the day.

2003 July, Debra Phillips, The High Price of a Good Man: A Novel‎, New York City: St. Martin's, page 29

She wasn’t the most accomplished cook in the world but she cold make a mean stew, she knew how to roast a chicken, and she could whip up eggs at least three different ways.

2021 July, Margaret Loudon, A Fatal Footnote‎, New York City: Berkley, page 109

A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs? [title]

2017 October 6, Claire Martin, “A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?”, in The New York Times‎

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 […].

1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps

being of middle age and a mean stature

a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the page number)”, in Fulke Greville, Matthew Gwinne, and John Florio, editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1590; republished in Albert Feuillerat, editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Cambridge English Classics: The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney; I), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1912,

according to the fittest style of lofty, mean, or lowly

, [John Milton], Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib, [London: […] Thomas Underhill and/or Thomas Johnson]

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.

2011 April 14, “Rival visions”, in The Economist

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

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.

a. 1623, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

Then will not this constitution be a kind of mean between aristocracy and oligarchy?

1997, John Llewelyn Davies with 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

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.

1875, William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, editors, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Little, Brown and Company, volume 1, page 10, s.v. Accentus Ecclesiasticus

Of these [rattles] they have Base, Tenor, Countertenor, Meane, and Treble.

1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 147

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

...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

In 18 27 = 2 3 {\displaystyle {\frac {18}{27}}={\frac {2}{3}}} , the product of the means is 2 ⋅ 27 {\displaystyle 2\cdot 27} , and the product of the extremes is 18 ⋅ 3 {\displaystyle 18\cdot 3} . Both products are 54.

2007, Carolyn C. Wheater, Homework Helpers: Geometry, Career Press,, page 99