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say it: meen
mean is an adjective, verb and noun meaning "approximating the statistical norm or average or expected value". It is pronounced /ˈmin/ — meen. It carries 16 recorded senses.
having or showing an ignoble lack of honor or morality
“that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble”
“taking a mean advantage”
“chok'd with ambition of the meaner sort”
“something essentially vulgar and meanspirited in politics”
have as a logical consequence
“The water shortage means that we have to stop taking long showers”
have a specified degree of importance
“My ex-husband means nothing to me”
“Happiness means everything”
intend to refer to
“I'm thinking of good food when I talk about France”
“Yes, I meant you when I complained about people who gossip!”
an average of n numbers computed by adding some function of the numbers and dividing by some function of n
statistics
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for mean come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.