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What is "mean"

Crossword clues for mean

mean
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
mean
I.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a form/mode/method/means of travel
▪ I find the train a more comfortable mode of travel.
a means of communication (=a way of exchanging information)
▪ There were no roads and no means of communication with the people in the mountains.
a means of escape (=a way of escaping)
▪ She searched in vain for a means of escape.
a means of escape (=a way of forgetting about a bad situation)
▪ Drugs and alcohol are their only means of escape.
a means of expression
▪ Art is not just a means of expression, it is also a means of communication.
a means to an end (=a way of achieving what you want)
▪ To Joe, work was a means to an end, nothing more.
a means/mode/form of transport
▪ Horses and carts were the only means of transport.
a means/source of livelihood
▪ Fishing is the main source of livelihood for many people in the area.
an effective means
▪ Is reducing the speed limit an effective means of reducing accidents?
an efficient means
▪ The tram is a very efficient means of transport.
arithmetic mean (=average)
▪ the arithmetic mean
be far from clear/be by no means clear (=be very unclear)
▪ The directions she gave me were far from clear.
be no mean achievement (=be difficult to achieve and therfore worth admiring)
▪ He got the top mark in the country which is no mean achievement.
by/through peaceful means
▪ We must redistribute power in this country by peaceful means.
convey meaning
▪ Children sometimes find it easier to use pictures to convey meaning, rather than words.
devise a means (=think of a way)
▪ We must devise a means of transport that does not pollute the atmosphere.
(do you) know what I mean? (=used to ask if someone understands or has the same feeling as you)
▪ It’s nice to have a change sometimes. Know what I mean?
double meaning
▪ A lot of the jokes were based on double meaning.
Greenwich Mean Time
I know what you mean (=I understand, because I have had the same experience)
▪ ‘I just felt so tired.' ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’.
if you know what I mean
▪ Sometimes it’s better not to ask too many questions, if you know what I mean.
literal meaning/sense/interpretation etc
▪ A trade war is not a war in the literal sense.
mean ruin (=cause ruin for sb)
▪ They fear that the proposals could mean ruin for small football clubs.
mean sth as a compliment
▪ When I said she’d lost weight, I meant it as a compliment.
mean sth by a remark
▪ What did you mean by that remark?
mean...literally (=I did not mean exactly what I said)
▪ I said I felt like quitting, but I didn’t mean it literally!
means of identification
▪ fingerprinting as a means of identification
means of propulsion
▪ research into liquid hydrogen as a means of propulsion
means test
▪ means-tested benefits
means/mode/form of transportation
▪ People need to get out of their cars and use other modes of transportation.
mean/spell trouble (=mean there will be trouble)
▪ They are now much more competitive, which can only spell trouble for their rivals.
meant no disrespect
▪ It was said on the spur of the moment and I meant no disrespect to anybody.
meant nothing (=was not important)
▪ Politics meant nothing to me for years.
no mean feat (=something that is difficult to do)
▪ It is no mean feat to perform such a difficult piece.
see what...mean (=I understand what you are saying)
▪ I see what you mean.
sth is by no means certain (=not definite)
▪ Victory was by no means certain for Smith.
the end justifies the means (=used to say that something bad is acceptable, if it achieves a good result)
▪ Their defence, that the end justifies the means, is not acceptable.
the true meaning of sth
▪ The story teaches a lesson about the true meaning of friendship.
turn nasty/mean/violent etc (=suddenly become angry, violent etc)
▪ The police are worried that the situation could turn violent.
ways and means
▪ We are discussing ways and means of bringing jobs to our area.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
also
▪ That would also mean better career prospects for women, more of whom work lower down the academic ladder.
▪ It would also mean that viewers, their trigger fingers on the clicker, would have trouble avoiding the candidates.
▪ Making full use of the shape information may also mean coding the lexicon by shape for ease of search.
▪ Trading Miller also means the Sharks dumped another big salary.
▪ Greater food production also means improved incomes for farmers.
▪ That also means gas stations also will lose some sales.
▪ It also means you can send Web pages by email.
▪ But, in addition, it has also meant some surrender of authority to Washington.
really
▪ Anna hadn't really meant here, but she felt she'd better not say anything.
▪ Without really meaning to, Chuck proves her right in seven comical episodes.
▪ That sounds like motherhood and apple pie until we examine what full employment really means.
▪ Passion goes a long way in movies; it helps if you really mean it.
▪ This really means cutting in angled sweeps, allowing the double blade to cut on the forward and return arc.
▪ How far away that really means.
▪ What it really means is that the new trams are a hybrid between street car and lightweight suburban train.
▪ Schwarz and Volgy question what it really means to live on the economy budget.
■ NOUN
lot
▪ This does not necessarily mean paying out a lot of money for several totally new changes of clothes.
▪ He always had a joke, of course, and his visits certainly meant a lot to the staff.
▪ Selling twelve bags to every gram means a lot of footwork.
▪ Two big things happened that meant a lot to me.
▪ It actually meant quite a lot to me to score a goal past the number-one goalkeeper.
▪ She means a lot to me.
▪ But in an emergency, says Mr Aho, that means a lot of people go hungry.
▪ I mean, a lot of times people like to work by themselves.
word
▪ The starting point is to discover what words mean.
▪ Now the words have a fuller meaning.
▪ You needed a word that meant both ones.
▪ Synonymy is a relation that structures the lexicon of a language into sets of words sharing a meaning.
▪ Masculine, feminine and neuter are labels for formal properties and have nothing to do with what a word actually means.
▪ Such lexical chains need not necessarily consist of words which mean the same, however.
▪ Nothing as haphazard as words, whose meaning and nuance shift enigmatically from one slippery slope to another.
■ VERB
know
▪ We know she means what she says.
▪ When I wear something, it has to impress me, know what I mean?
▪ Looking for family-right, Aunt Marie, I know what you mean.
▪ Some were struggling behind-but they did not really know the meaning of struggling.
▪ But I knew what he meant.
▪ She knows what it means now.
▪ I did not quite know what they meant but I took it as a compliment.
suppose
▪ It was all motion, always moving ... so I suppose that must mean I didn't stop; not really.
▪ Democracy is not supposed to mean a nation of suckers.
▪ Now what was that supposed to mean?
▪ I suppose it was meant to make people feel they were living in a good place.
▪ I suppose she meant if she put me on the Pill she was letting me sleep around.
▪ I supposed it was meant ironically but I was too weary to care.
▪ I suppose that this means that this month's parish magazine should be a special holiday edition.
▪ I suppose you mean an all-consuming I-will-do-anything-for-you passion?
understand
▪ Wistfully, William Wordsworth wrote: en and everyone understood what the poet meant.
▪ President Clinton understood what this meant for developing countries yet did nothing about it.
▪ He understood what it meant to the living left behind.
▪ Before the managers could begin to understand what providing leadership meant, they had to grasp these fundamental ideas.
▪ But very soon he got used to these things and learnt to understand what they meant.
▪ Sandi looks at Yolanda; she understood whom Yolanda meant.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
(not) know the meaning of sth
▪ Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of fear.
▪ A dictionary is useless unless one already knows the meanings of many words.
▪ For instance, we assume he would satisfy our behavioural criteria for being some one who knows the meaning of the word bank.
▪ He had a lot of things representing other things that no one but he knew the meaning of.
▪ Men like Luke Hunter didn't know the meaning of permanence - or fidelity.
▪ Regarding exercises: before attempting to answer a question do make sure you know the meaning of all the words in it!
▪ So I know the meaning of credit.
▪ Some were struggling behind-but they did not really know the meaning of struggling.
▪ Willi didn't know the meaning of restraint, not in any aspect of his life.
a dirty/rotten/mean trick
▪ Bomb threats and other dirty tricks kept many voters at home.
a means to an end
▪ Technology is not a magic wand, but only a means to an end.
▪ Admittedly, policy is important: but it is only a means to an end.
▪ All in all, everything I did was a means to an end -- my own.
▪ Don't think of computers as a daunting modern technology; they're only a means to an end.
▪ Protection is vital: but as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.
▪ Showbiz was a means to an end.
▪ The separation into sequential categories of response is merely a means to an end.
▪ The young man was merely a means to an end and, in both cases, that end had now been served.
▪ These should be viewed as a means to an end, rather than as ends in themselves.
be/mean everything (to sb)
▪ Walt's family means everything to him.
▪ Beckwith meant everything to him, she'd recognized that from the first.
▪ Does that mean everything deserves a Nobel Prize?
▪ It meant everything to her to be able to play her senior year.
▪ On the other hand, a word can not mean everything and something at the same time.
▪ She needed to be everything she could be and London would provide for that.
▪ Timing can be everything, even in rocket science.
▪ Well, that seems to be everything so far as tomorrow is concerned.
bereft of hope/meaning/life etc
▪ How haggard and bereft of hope they looked!
▪ These women were old and toothless at a young age, their eyes bereft of hope.
by all means!
by fair means or foul
by means of sth
▪ Critics were silenced by means of torture and unfair trials.
▪ Funds for economic development were provided by means of sterling bond issues in the London capital market.
▪ Initially this will be done by means of markers or cones and we will explain the new arrangements to the children.
▪ Let us briefly consider how you might analyze this claim by means of the scientific method.
▪ Maximilian was killed by means of a carbonic acid injection.
▪ Or gas before he backed himself into a corner and tried to escape by means of the faro table.
▪ Other ethnographic techniques Ethnographic research is not carried out only by means of participant observation and unstructured interviewing.
▪ Word of the Barrio barred owl spread among birders by means of an efficient and long established telephone grapevine.
by no means/not by any means
▪ It's difficult, but by no means impossible.
▪ It's not clear by any means where the money is going to come from to fund this project.
▪ It is by no means certain that you'll get your money back.
how do you mean?
▪ Straight? How do you mean, straight?
▪ And now, how do you mean translated?
just because ... it doesn't mean
mean business
▪ And to prove we mean business, our members will stage a one-day strike next week.
▪ Firm action would show both sides that the EU and the UN really meant business.
▪ The man had a gun. It was obvious he meant business.
▪ But as the oil men realised that we meant business, seizures began to drop.
▪ But when it bites, it means business.
▪ For one local company it's meant business taking off like a rocket.
▪ One of the quintet not only means business but high-minded, selfless business.
▪ They looked as though they meant business.
▪ This does not necessarily mean businesses must avoid all such one-of-a-kinds whatever their nature.
▪ Those boys knew we meant business.
▪ Zhou had discarded his usual severe tunic for a gray Western business suit, and he meant business.
mean no harm/not mean any harm
mean the world to sb/think the world of sb
not by any manner of means
▪ You know, it isn't all sweetness and light here, not by any manner of means.
not know/mean diddly
▪ Bradley doesn't know diddly about running his own business.
shade of meaning/opinion/feeling etc
▪ As a solo instrument following a melodic line, the violin can convey every imaginable shade of feeling.
▪ From a sociologist's point of view, work has shades of meaning which are individual to each of us.
▪ In this more tolerant environment several newspapers representing different shades of opinion have already sprung up, especially in the urban areas.
▪ It represented all shades of opinion, but it was dominated by Sukarno.
▪ There was in most works an allowance for shades of feeling and meaning, and for the existence of doubt.
▪ These two directions or shades of opinion are not necessarily as starkly polarised as may appear.
▪ To teach me to perceive the shades of beauty and the shades of meaning ....
the means of production
▪ It would be foolish to nationalize all the means of production.
▪ A class in itself is simply a social group whose members share the same relationship to the means of production.
▪ But it did not own the means of production.
▪ Classes did not exist since all members of society shared the same relationship to the means of production.
▪ Finally, the owner-worker cleavage involves questions of labour exploitation and control over the means of production.
▪ Since managers are in control, they effectively own the means of production.
▪ The bourgeoisie class own the means of production, the proletariat do not.
▪ The dominant class, the capitalists, own and control the means of production and thereby exploit the subordinate working class.
▪ The power of the ruling class therefore stems from its ownership and control of the means of production.
this means war
what's the meaning of this?
▪ What's the meaning of this? I asked you to be here an hour ago!
woman/man etc of independent means
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ "Downsizing" simply means that firms are tending to buy smaller computers to do jobs which used to require big ones.
▪ "Poultry" means chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese.
▪ A free economy does not mean the absence of any economic control.
▪ Cloudy water from the taps usually means problems with your storage tank.
▪ Dark clouds usually mean rain.
▪ Do you know what "ambidextrous" means?
▪ Does this mean I can't go to the wedding?
▪ Frank's surgery residency means staying in Albuquerque another five years.
▪ He said Sarah was a very close friend, but I'm not sure what he meant.
▪ Her car's not there, so that must mean she's gone to pick him up.
▪ High interest rates and high inflation mean a recession is not far away.
▪ His new responsibilities at work mean Leroy will rarely see his children.
▪ I mean it - I'll scream if you don't let me go.
▪ I meant that we would have to leave early, that's all.
▪ I meant what I said, I never want to see you again.
▪ If A is false, does that also mean proposition B is false?
▪ It says "not suitable for children", which means anyone under 16.
▪ Just because it's red doesn't mean it's cherry-flavored.
▪ Oh, you mean the blue shorts.
▪ She's kind of irritable, if you know what I mean.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And I meant what I said about you at the start of this.
▪ Bush's tax cuts and the slowing economy mean that Pentagon policy choices will have to be made this year.
▪ In practice this means for men.
▪ It is much quicker, and it means the same, if we say Yes I do or Yes I think so.
▪ Similarly, some words which are meant to stir can leave others unmoved.
▪ Since the amount of information to be conveyed remains much the same this means that the signal-to-noise ratio will be worse.
▪ That was the point Henry Hyde meant to make about opinion polls.
▪ The strength of the pound means bikes are much cheaper to buy on the continent than over here.
II.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
achievement
▪ No mean achievement given the established market domination by Sage.
▪ For an immigrant boy this marital alliance was no mean achievement.
▪ But that was no mean achievement.
▪ It will be no mean achievement.
▪ This is no mean achievement as it means achieving Guild membership consistently for five successive years.
▪ To have provided such an advance on existing theories is no mean achievement.
▪ Considering that we were completely and utterly untrained at this stage of the war, this was no mean achievement.
age
▪ The mean age of a sample of fourteen was 18 7.
▪ The mean age increased together with the severity of the oesophageal injury.
▪ Their mean age was 46.6 years with a range of 21-82 years, and 10 were men.
▪ In each site in both series, the mean age of the women was greater than the mean age of the men.
▪ The mean ages of onset of colitis in the benign and malignant groups were 31 and 24 years respectively.
▪ To improve precision, it is usual to date several samples from the same archaeological level to determine the mean age.
▪ The mean age was 40 years, an equal male/female distribution was found.
▪ Five male cases died at mean age 47.8, compared with two controls at 49.5.
distance
▪ The mean distance of the electron from the central proton defines the atom's size.
duration
▪ Secondly, the mean duration of treatment before study termination was similar in both groups.
feat
▪ On Tuesday Invergordon Distillers reported a marginal improvement in underlying profits, no mean feat given the difficulties facing the whisky sector.
▪ Given that there are some 20,000 such fastenings in a boat of this size, this is no mean feat.
▪ This is no mean feat as the statute has 108 sections divided into 12 separate parts, together with 15 schedules.
▪ The discovery of an effect with such a long latent period was no mean feat of epidemiology.
number
▪ The mean number of errors made during each trial was calculated for each group.
▪ A mean number of 10 well orientated crypts were examined for each specimen.
▪ The mean number of letters recalled across the 12 subjects for each time delay was then calculated.
▪ Table 3.1 shows the mean number of correct responses given by each age group.
▪ The mean number of hits was 9.3 and false alarms 3.1.
▪ This indicates an increase in the mean number of quanta released per trial.
▪ The mean number of hits and false alarms in Table 4.6 are out of a maximum possible number of nine.
score
▪ The middle third yielded a mean score of 54 percent and this was also the overall mean score.
▪ The figures in the table are thus mean scores of the means for the organizations in the three groups.
▪ The test yielded a mean score of just over 50 percent for all pupils participating.
▪ Main outcome measures - Improvement in mean scores on Hamilton depression rating scale for 55 randomised controlled trials.
▪ The boys' mean score was 57 percent and the girls' 51 percent.
▪ The mean scores at baseline for the subgroup of students who were followed up were the same as for those not followed up.
street
▪ They'd ganged up on Kenny and afterwards he looked as if the mean streets had come up to meet him face first.
▪ Hopkins, noted for a ferocious work ethic, often refers to prison and life on the mean streets.
▪ Down the mean streets of the urban wasteland treads psychiatrist Trevor Turner, looking for the tell-tale signs.
temperature
▪ This behaviour is similar to the observed evolution of the mean temperature in the lower stratosphere during 1984 and 1989.
▪ The mean temperature in Champagne is 10.53°C sheltered at 2 metres above the ground and 11.21°C at 0.2 metres above the ground.
▪ Since then they have been both warmer and colder, with oscillations of the order of 1-2°C about annual mean temperatures.
value
▪ Where more than one sample has been used, mean values are shown here, although there are within-species differences.
▪ This pattern has been constructed by finding the mean value of coin loss at eighty-eight sites.
▪ The data were then grouped according to the mean value.
▪ Applications are then made either side of this mean value, depending on crop greenness.
▪ The statistical significance of the difference between the mean value of groups was tested by Student's t test for unpaired values.
velocity
▪ The mean velocity also varies vertically, and we shall confine attention to two-dimensional flow.
▪ Firstly, the mean velocity profile may be liable to local instability, somewhat analogous to instability of laminar flow.
▪ The turbulence is being kept going by the working of this against the mean velocity gradient.
▪ In most turbulent flows, for example, only the mean velocity can be measured with a Pitot tube.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
(not) know the meaning of sth
▪ Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of fear.
▪ A dictionary is useless unless one already knows the meanings of many words.
▪ For instance, we assume he would satisfy our behavioural criteria for being some one who knows the meaning of the word bank.
▪ He had a lot of things representing other things that no one but he knew the meaning of.
▪ Men like Luke Hunter didn't know the meaning of permanence - or fidelity.
▪ Regarding exercises: before attempting to answer a question do make sure you know the meaning of all the words in it!
▪ So I know the meaning of credit.
▪ Some were struggling behind-but they did not really know the meaning of struggling.
▪ Willi didn't know the meaning of restraint, not in any aspect of his life.
a dirty/rotten/mean trick
▪ Bomb threats and other dirty tricks kept many voters at home.
a means to an end
▪ Technology is not a magic wand, but only a means to an end.
▪ Admittedly, policy is important: but it is only a means to an end.
▪ All in all, everything I did was a means to an end -- my own.
▪ Don't think of computers as a daunting modern technology; they're only a means to an end.
▪ Protection is vital: but as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.
▪ Showbiz was a means to an end.
▪ The separation into sequential categories of response is merely a means to an end.
▪ The young man was merely a means to an end and, in both cases, that end had now been served.
▪ These should be viewed as a means to an end, rather than as ends in themselves.
be/mean everything (to sb)
▪ Walt's family means everything to him.
▪ Beckwith meant everything to him, she'd recognized that from the first.
▪ Does that mean everything deserves a Nobel Prize?
▪ It meant everything to her to be able to play her senior year.
▪ On the other hand, a word can not mean everything and something at the same time.
▪ She needed to be everything she could be and London would provide for that.
▪ Timing can be everything, even in rocket science.
▪ Well, that seems to be everything so far as tomorrow is concerned.
by all means!
by means of sth
▪ Critics were silenced by means of torture and unfair trials.
▪ Funds for economic development were provided by means of sterling bond issues in the London capital market.
▪ Initially this will be done by means of markers or cones and we will explain the new arrangements to the children.
▪ Let us briefly consider how you might analyze this claim by means of the scientific method.
▪ Maximilian was killed by means of a carbonic acid injection.
▪ Or gas before he backed himself into a corner and tried to escape by means of the faro table.
▪ Other ethnographic techniques Ethnographic research is not carried out only by means of participant observation and unstructured interviewing.
▪ Word of the Barrio barred owl spread among birders by means of an efficient and long established telephone grapevine.
by no means/not by any means
▪ It's difficult, but by no means impossible.
▪ It's not clear by any means where the money is going to come from to fund this project.
▪ It is by no means certain that you'll get your money back.
how do you mean?
▪ Straight? How do you mean, straight?
▪ And now, how do you mean translated?
just because ... it doesn't mean
mean business
▪ And to prove we mean business, our members will stage a one-day strike next week.
▪ Firm action would show both sides that the EU and the UN really meant business.
▪ The man had a gun. It was obvious he meant business.
▪ But as the oil men realised that we meant business, seizures began to drop.
▪ But when it bites, it means business.
▪ For one local company it's meant business taking off like a rocket.
▪ One of the quintet not only means business but high-minded, selfless business.
▪ They looked as though they meant business.
▪ This does not necessarily mean businesses must avoid all such one-of-a-kinds whatever their nature.
▪ Those boys knew we meant business.
▪ Zhou had discarded his usual severe tunic for a gray Western business suit, and he meant business.
mean no harm/not mean any harm
mean the world to sb/think the world of sb
not by any manner of means
▪ You know, it isn't all sweetness and light here, not by any manner of means.
not know/mean diddly
▪ Bradley doesn't know diddly about running his own business.
shade of meaning/opinion/feeling etc
▪ As a solo instrument following a melodic line, the violin can convey every imaginable shade of feeling.
▪ From a sociologist's point of view, work has shades of meaning which are individual to each of us.
▪ In this more tolerant environment several newspapers representing different shades of opinion have already sprung up, especially in the urban areas.
▪ It represented all shades of opinion, but it was dominated by Sukarno.
▪ There was in most works an allowance for shades of feeling and meaning, and for the existence of doubt.
▪ These two directions or shades of opinion are not necessarily as starkly polarised as may appear.
▪ To teach me to perceive the shades of beauty and the shades of meaning ....
the means of production
▪ It would be foolish to nationalize all the means of production.
▪ A class in itself is simply a social group whose members share the same relationship to the means of production.
▪ But it did not own the means of production.
▪ Classes did not exist since all members of society shared the same relationship to the means of production.
▪ Finally, the owner-worker cleavage involves questions of labour exploitation and control over the means of production.
▪ Since managers are in control, they effectively own the means of production.
▪ The bourgeoisie class own the means of production, the proletariat do not.
▪ The dominant class, the capitalists, own and control the means of production and thereby exploit the subordinate working class.
▪ The power of the ruling class therefore stems from its ownership and control of the means of production.
this means war
understand sth to be/mean sth
▪ We understood his lack of response to mean "no."
▪ Accent, tone, fluency and vocabulary can affect the ability of sender and receiver to understand or to be understood.
▪ After a while-it seemed like an eternity-Philip usually acknowledged that he understood what needed to be accomplished.
▪ Barmy anyway, which is what I understand you to mean.
▪ Hicks understood it to mean Those Who Are.
▪ Homosexuals have as much right to be understood, to be treated with compassionate love as the rest of us.
▪ Isabel had always understood Faith to mean that she should have it.
▪ Must you really understand duration to be a savvy investor?
▪ To understand is to be betrayed.
what's that supposed to mean?
▪ "It sounds like things aren't going too well for you lately." "What's that supposed to mean?"
what's the meaning of this?
▪ What's the meaning of this? I asked you to be here an hour ago!
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He's so mean, he won't even buy his wife a birthday present.
▪ He was mean to those who worked for him and generous to those who he hardly knew.
▪ I never thought he was capable of doing such a mean thing to his brother.
▪ It was mean of you to disturb her when she was having a rest.
▪ Marsha has always been mean with her money.
▪ My father was a mean old man who resented every penny he spent on us.
▪ Rick's so mean he never even buys his wife a birthday present.
▪ Sharon and the others were really mean to me at school today.
▪ She hated him for being so mean. Why was he stopping her from seeing her friends?
▪ That was a mean trick.
▪ The mean length of stay in the hospital is 11 days.
▪ There's no reason to be mean.
▪ We soon found out that our new teacher could be real mean.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ In the garden grey airs blow moist, but the mean sky holds on to its water.
▪ Now with Sam gone Helen will get meaner and meaner to me like always.
▪ The mean labelling indices did not change significantly over time regardless of whether or not there were recurrences.
▪ The disparity between solar noon and mean noon widens and narrows as the seasons change, on a sliding scale.
III.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
annual
▪ Average relative humidity is high throughout the year, ranging from 80 to 88% saturation, with an annual mean of 85%.
available
▪ All available means for eradicating underdevelopment exist at the door step of the continent in particular and the world in general.
conventional
▪ Once nasty enough, this virus would start spreading by more conventional means.
democratic
▪ This is what democratic leadership means.
▪ According to sources, the report urges paramilitary groups to commit themselves to exclusively democratic means and to total disarmament.
effective
▪ Thin-section petrology is a more effective means of carrying out such quantitative work.
▪ The only effective means of controlling outbreaks of this disease are mass vaccination campaigns.
▪ Vitamin supplements, which cost just a few cents a dose, are a highly effective means of prevention.
▪ This was not just a very effective means to an end: it was an end in itself-and a gamble.
▪ It has proved a simple, cheap and-so far-#effective means of maintaining good circulation in my legs.
▪ Such networks may also provide a more effective means for monitoring occupationally acquired infections in hospital and laboratory personnel.
▪ Quevauviller is very successful in systematically altering analytical chemists to effective means for achieving quality in analytical speciation.
excellent
▪ An excellent means of putting money in the pockets of the poor without burdening taxpayers.
▪ They are easy to create and are an excellent means of presenting detailed information.
financial
▪ Most patients of the hospital do not have the financial means to afford treatment for erectile dysfunction.
▪ Although news of her work in Motijhil had spread quickly, they had almost no financial means.
▪ On housing, what exactly does the Financial Secretary mean by the introduction of competition into housing management?
▪ Lamar Alexander and news commentator Pat Buchanan, both of whom themselves are men of substantial financial means.
▪ If your financial means vary as much as your spending habits, then such a mortgage may be for you.
▪ The Hicks family was not one of great financial means.
▪ Barneys executives have contended that its expansion strained its management resources more than its financial means.
independent
▪ Only in the last 50 years have independent means of absolute dating become available, transforming archaeology in the process.
▪ The virus has no independent means of propulsion and can not control its own motion.
▪ Here we are, you see, women of modest but independent means, living together, but without male attachments.
indirect
▪ The feistier sort of Republican is as hostile to big government by indirect means as to the direct variety.
▪ But other details, some of the most interesting, can not be confirmed by such indirect means.
modest
▪ The family survived on modest means.
▪ Being of very modest means, but having some contacts upon the turf, he attempted to increase his wages by gambling.
▪ Here we are, you see, women of modest but independent means, living together, but without male attachments.
peaceful
▪ Second, unification shall be achieved through peaceful means, and not through use of force against one another.
possible
▪ Campaigners insist that developing countries must use every possible means to get hold of affordable drugs that can stop people dying.
▪ We should be prepared to counter this unprecedented instrument of domination by all possible means.
▪ One possible means could entail offering tax or financing incentives to small high-technology businesses.
▪ The man of conscience and compassion must see that efficiency is increased by all possible means.
primary
▪ Consequently, wage employment is the primary means by which they can be lifted out of grinding poverty.
▪ For years, annexation has been the primary means by which city officials planned for growth.
▪ It was a primary means of evangelism.
▪ Electronic networks can support this organizational structure by providing the primary means of connection.
traditional
▪ But the advantages of getting weather on-line instead of through more traditional means are just as clear.
■ VERB
achieve
▪ Quevauviller is very successful in systematically altering analytical chemists to effective means for achieving quality in analytical speciation.
▪ The lawyer is responsible for working with the client to decide the best means to achieve those objectives.
▪ Where the consensus broke down was over the means used to achieve the goals.
▪ And for the first time, they had the means to achieve it.
▪ University law states that a strike is not a legal means of achieving student objectives.
become
▪ The waters of chaos which extinguish life in judgment actually bear up the survivors, becoming their means of salvation.
▪ Human experience becomes the means to comprehend and express our awareness of the sacred.
▪ When did it become admirable to be mean?
▪ The photographic camera thus became the foremost means for producing or recording such images.
▪ It has become a central means by which Congress secures the accountability of executive and independent agencies.
▪ They were first, as a result, to become concerned with means, explicit or unrecognized, for safeguarding that stake.
do
▪ Q.. What exactly does the term bankruptcy mean?
▪ So, what does all this mean?
▪ In short, do ends justify means or are the means themselves of intrinsic significance to the final outcome?
▪ But what exactly does this claim mean?
▪ What does all this jargon mean?
end
▪ Lifestyle and social status, cars, houses and clothes, are means, not ends.
▪ The central failure of government today is one of means, not ends.
find
▪ Yet finding the means to deal with this determined and ruthless group is not easy.
▪ Daedalus himself, the wily artisan who wrought the whole thing, could find no means to pierce its mystery from within.
▪ Yes, Professor, and I was at no loss to find these means.
▪ The females in their zeal would find some means to drive him away into the military service....
▪ First Bank officials, however, contend they will find other means to bolster earnings and maintain their projections.
▪ The national government seemingly could find no constitutional means to intercede to protect its black citizens.
▪ One action is to meet with school staff to find the means to help Mike at school.
▪ When Pauline grew into her teen years, the father found the means to ship her off to relatives in Baltimore.
justify
▪ The end does not justify the means, no matter what the cause.
▪ In short, do ends justify means or are the means themselves of intrinsic significance to the final outcome?
lack
▪ The poorer ones lack the means to get out, and keep getting caught.
▪ These early systems sometimes provide information only and lack the means to accept orders via the keyboard.
▪ It may feel it lacks the means to guarantee success and that a military enterprise would be too risky.
▪ They lacked both proof and means of verification.
live
▪ The really rapid growth in the second half of the 1990s was the result of an economy living beyond its means.
▪ Yet that earlier generation was able to live within its means, balancing budgets year after year.
▪ Are you living within your means?
protect
▪ And he also had a few choice words about my means of protecting myself.
▪ The national government seemingly could find no constitutional means to intercede to protect its black citizens.
provide
▪ Nature, fortunately, has provided a convenient means for locating the chromosomes.
▪ It pays lip service to local choices but provides no specific means to make them more rational and efficient.
▪ Thus they also provided the means for doing this: microsurgery, by pipette.
▪ Forms provide the means to collect and act on data entered by the end user.
▪ Present-value calculations provide a simple means of quantifying this time value of money by using the reciprocal of the compound interest formula.
▪ Wise societies provide ample means for young men to affirm themselves without afflicting others.
▪ People who work provide the means by which we get the goods and services we want.
understand
▪ To understand what sustainability means, it's necessary first to understand what unsustainability means in terms of first-order scientific principles.
▪ Here are a few: Understand what cholesterol means and where it originates.
▪ The magic does not come from menstruation alone, it comes from understanding what menstruation means.
use
▪ Campaigners insist that developing countries must use every possible means to get hold of affordable drugs that can stop people dying.
▪ All agreed that the United States had to stand up to the aggressors from the north, using whatever means were necessary.
▪ These are people using legislative means to preserve their language and culture.
▪ They are authorized to use any conceivable means to accomplish the mission.
▪ Sometimes people have learning problems and they use visual means to help them understand.
▪ You must use whatever means are available to you and avoid wasting time on those that are not.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
(not) know the meaning of sth
▪ Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of fear.
▪ A dictionary is useless unless one already knows the meanings of many words.
▪ For instance, we assume he would satisfy our behavioural criteria for being some one who knows the meaning of the word bank.
▪ He had a lot of things representing other things that no one but he knew the meaning of.
▪ Men like Luke Hunter didn't know the meaning of permanence - or fidelity.
▪ Regarding exercises: before attempting to answer a question do make sure you know the meaning of all the words in it!
▪ So I know the meaning of credit.
▪ Some were struggling behind-but they did not really know the meaning of struggling.
▪ Willi didn't know the meaning of restraint, not in any aspect of his life.
a dirty/rotten/mean trick
▪ Bomb threats and other dirty tricks kept many voters at home.
a means to an end
▪ Technology is not a magic wand, but only a means to an end.
▪ Admittedly, policy is important: but it is only a means to an end.
▪ All in all, everything I did was a means to an end -- my own.
▪ Don't think of computers as a daunting modern technology; they're only a means to an end.
▪ Protection is vital: but as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.
▪ Showbiz was a means to an end.
▪ The separation into sequential categories of response is merely a means to an end.
▪ The young man was merely a means to an end and, in both cases, that end had now been served.
▪ These should be viewed as a means to an end, rather than as ends in themselves.
be/mean everything (to sb)
▪ Walt's family means everything to him.
▪ Beckwith meant everything to him, she'd recognized that from the first.
▪ Does that mean everything deserves a Nobel Prize?
▪ It meant everything to her to be able to play her senior year.
▪ On the other hand, a word can not mean everything and something at the same time.
▪ She needed to be everything she could be and London would provide for that.
▪ Timing can be everything, even in rocket science.
▪ Well, that seems to be everything so far as tomorrow is concerned.
bereft of hope/meaning/life etc
▪ How haggard and bereft of hope they looked!
▪ These women were old and toothless at a young age, their eyes bereft of hope.
by all means!
by fair means or foul
by means of sth
▪ Critics were silenced by means of torture and unfair trials.
▪ Funds for economic development were provided by means of sterling bond issues in the London capital market.
▪ Initially this will be done by means of markers or cones and we will explain the new arrangements to the children.
▪ Let us briefly consider how you might analyze this claim by means of the scientific method.
▪ Maximilian was killed by means of a carbonic acid injection.
▪ Or gas before he backed himself into a corner and tried to escape by means of the faro table.
▪ Other ethnographic techniques Ethnographic research is not carried out only by means of participant observation and unstructured interviewing.
▪ Word of the Barrio barred owl spread among birders by means of an efficient and long established telephone grapevine.
by no means/not by any means
▪ It's difficult, but by no means impossible.
▪ It's not clear by any means where the money is going to come from to fund this project.
▪ It is by no means certain that you'll get your money back.
how do you mean?
▪ Straight? How do you mean, straight?
▪ And now, how do you mean translated?
just because ... it doesn't mean
mean business
▪ And to prove we mean business, our members will stage a one-day strike next week.
▪ Firm action would show both sides that the EU and the UN really meant business.
▪ The man had a gun. It was obvious he meant business.
▪ But as the oil men realised that we meant business, seizures began to drop.
▪ But when it bites, it means business.
▪ For one local company it's meant business taking off like a rocket.
▪ One of the quintet not only means business but high-minded, selfless business.
▪ They looked as though they meant business.
▪ This does not necessarily mean businesses must avoid all such one-of-a-kinds whatever their nature.
▪ Those boys knew we meant business.
▪ Zhou had discarded his usual severe tunic for a gray Western business suit, and he meant business.
mean no harm/not mean any harm
mean the world to sb/think the world of sb
not by any manner of means
▪ You know, it isn't all sweetness and light here, not by any manner of means.
not know/mean diddly
▪ Bradley doesn't know diddly about running his own business.
shade of meaning/opinion/feeling etc
▪ As a solo instrument following a melodic line, the violin can convey every imaginable shade of feeling.
▪ From a sociologist's point of view, work has shades of meaning which are individual to each of us.
▪ In this more tolerant environment several newspapers representing different shades of opinion have already sprung up, especially in the urban areas.
▪ It represented all shades of opinion, but it was dominated by Sukarno.
▪ There was in most works an allowance for shades of feeling and meaning, and for the existence of doubt.
▪ These two directions or shades of opinion are not necessarily as starkly polarised as may appear.
▪ To teach me to perceive the shades of beauty and the shades of meaning ....
the means of production
▪ It would be foolish to nationalize all the means of production.
▪ A class in itself is simply a social group whose members share the same relationship to the means of production.
▪ But it did not own the means of production.
▪ Classes did not exist since all members of society shared the same relationship to the means of production.
▪ Finally, the owner-worker cleavage involves questions of labour exploitation and control over the means of production.
▪ Since managers are in control, they effectively own the means of production.
▪ The bourgeoisie class own the means of production, the proletariat do not.
▪ The dominant class, the capitalists, own and control the means of production and thereby exploit the subordinate working class.
▪ The power of the ruling class therefore stems from its ownership and control of the means of production.
this means war
understand sth to be/mean sth
▪ We understood his lack of response to mean "no."
▪ Accent, tone, fluency and vocabulary can affect the ability of sender and receiver to understand or to be understood.
▪ After a while-it seemed like an eternity-Philip usually acknowledged that he understood what needed to be accomplished.
▪ Barmy anyway, which is what I understand you to mean.
▪ Hicks understood it to mean Those Who Are.
▪ Homosexuals have as much right to be understood, to be treated with compassionate love as the rest of us.
▪ Isabel had always understood Faith to mean that she should have it.
▪ Must you really understand duration to be a savvy investor?
▪ To understand is to be betrayed.
what's that supposed to mean?
▪ "It sounds like things aren't going too well for you lately." "What's that supposed to mean?"
what's the meaning of this?
▪ What's the meaning of this? I asked you to be here an hour ago!
woman/man etc of independent means
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As for the rapists, I bet they are unsuccessful in attracting females, and so resort to desperate means.
▪ But success was by no means guaranteed.
▪ By no means, Watson; even now quite a few scientists continue to doubt.
▪ In some of the other states, the usual means of locomotion was still a horse and wagon.
▪ The poorer ones lack the means to get out, and keep getting caught.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mean

Mean \Mean\, a. [OE. mene, OF. meiien, F. moyen, fr. L. medianus that is in the middle, fr. medius; akin to E. mid. See Mid.]

  1. Occupying a middle position; middle; being about midway between extremes.

    Being of middle age and a mean stature.
    --Sir. P. Sidney.

  2. Intermediate in excellence of any kind.

    According to the fittest style of lofty, mean, or lowly.
    --Milton.

  3. (Math.) Average; having an intermediate value between two extremes, or between the several successive values of a variable quantity during one cycle of variation; as, mean distance; mean motion; mean solar day.

    Mean distance (of a planet from the sun) (Astron.), the average of the distances throughout one revolution of the planet, equivalent to the semi-major axis of the orbit.

    Mean error (Math. Phys.), the average error of a number of observations found by taking the mean value of the positive and negative errors without regard to sign.

    Mean-square error, or Error of the mean square (Math. Phys.), the error the square of which is the mean of the squares of all the errors; -- called also, mean square deviation, mean error.

    Mean line. (Crystallog.) Same as Bisectrix.

    Mean noon, noon as determined by mean time.

    Mean proportional (between two numbers) (Math.), the square root of their product.

    Mean sun, a fictitious sun supposed to move uniformly in the equator so as to be on the meridian each day at mean noon.

    Mean time, time as measured by an equable motion, as of a perfect clock, or as reckoned on the supposition that all the days of the year are of a mean or uniform length, in contradistinction from apparent time, or that actually indicated by the sun, and from sidereal time, or that measured by the stars.

Mean

Mean \Mean\ (m[=e]n), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Meant (m[e^]nt); p. pr. & vb. n. Meaning.] [OE. menen, AS. m[=ae]nan to recite, tell, intend, wish; akin to OS. m[=e]nian to have in mind, mean, D. meenen, G. meinen, OHG. meinan, Icel. meina, Sw. mena, Dan. mene, and to E. mind. [root]104. See Mind, and cf. Moan.]

  1. To have in the mind, as a purpose, intention, etc.; to intend; to purpose; to design; as, what do you mean to do?

    What mean ye by this service ?
    --Ex. xii. 26.

    Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.
    --Gen. 1. 20.

    I am not a Spaniard To say that it is yours and not to mean it.
    --Longfellow.

  2. To signify; to indicate; to import; to denote.

    What mean these seven ewe lambs ?
    --Gen. xxi. 29.

    Go ye, and learn what that meaneth.
    --Matt. ix. 1

Mean

Mean \Mean\ (m[=e]n), a. [Compar. Meaner (m[=e]n"[~e]r); superl. Meanest.] [OE. mene, AS. m[=ae]ne wicked; akin to m[=a]n, a., wicked, n., wickedness, OS. m[=e]n wickedness, OHG. mein, G. meineid perjury, Icel. mein harm, hurt, and perh. to AS. gem[=ae]ne common, general, D. gemeen, G. gemein, Goth. gam['a]ins, and L. communis. The AS. gem[=ae]ne prob. influenced the meaning.]

  1. Destitute of distinction or eminence; common; low; vulgar; humble. ``Of mean parentage.''
    --Sir P. Sidney.

    The mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself.
    --Is. ii. 9.

  2. Wanting dignity of mind; low-minded; base; destitute of honor; spiritless; as, a mean motive.

    Can you imagine I so mean could prove, To save my life by changing of my love ?
    --Dryden.

  3. Of little value or account; worthy of little or no regard; contemptible; despicable.

    The Roman legions and great C[ae]sar found Our fathers no mean foes.
    --J. Philips.

  4. Of poor quality; as, mean fare.

  5. Penurious; stingy; close-fisted; illiberal; as, mean hospitality.

    Note: Mean is sometimes used in the formation of compounds, the sense of which is obvious without explanation; as, meanborn, mean-looking, etc.

    Syn: Base; ignoble; abject; beggarly; wretched; degraded; degenerate; vulgar; vile; servile; menial; spiritless; groveling; slavish; dishonorable; disgraceful; shameful; despicable; contemptible; paltry; sordid. See Base.

Mean

Mean \Mean\, v. i. To have a purpose or intention. [Rare, except in the phrase to mean well, or ill.]
--Shak.

Mean

Mean \Mean\, n.

  1. That which is mean, or intermediate, between two extremes of place, time, or number; the middle point or place; middle rate or degree; mediocrity; medium; absence of extremes or excess; moderation; measure.

    But to speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
    --Bacon.

    There is a mean in all things.
    --Dryden.

    The extremes we have mentioned, between which the wellinstracted Christian holds the mean, are correlatives.
    --I. Taylor.

  2. (Math.) A quantity having an intermediate value between several others, from which it is derived, and of which it expresses the resultant value; usually, unless otherwise specified, it is the simple average, formed by adding the quantities together and dividing by their number, which is called an arithmetical mean. A geometrical mean is the nth root of the product of the n quantities being averaged.

  3. That through which, or by the help of which, an end is attained; something tending to an object desired; intermediate agency or measure; necessary condition or coagent; instrument.

    Their virtuous conversation was a mean to work the conversion of the heathen to Christ.
    --Hooker.

    You may be able, by this mean, to review your own scientific acquirements.
    --Coleridge.

    Philosophical doubt is not an end, but a mean.
    --Sir W. Hamilton.

    Note: In this sense the word is usually employed in the plural form means, and often with a singular attribute or predicate, as if a singular noun.

    By this means he had them more at vantage.
    --Bacon.

    What other means is left unto us.
    --Shak.

  4. pl. Hence: Resources; property, revenue, or the like, considered as the condition of easy livelihood, or an instrumentality at command for effecting any purpose; disposable force or substance.

    Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
    --Shak.

  5. (Mus.) A part, whether alto or tenor, intermediate between the soprano and base; a middle part. [Obs.]

    The mean is drowned with your unruly base.
    --Shak.

  6. Meantime; meanwhile. [Obs.]
    --Spenser.

  7. A mediator; a go-between. [Obs.]
    --Piers Plowman.

    He wooeth her by means and by brokage.
    --Chaucer.

    By all means, certainly; without fail; as, go, by all means.

    By any means, in any way; possibly; at all.

    If by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead.
    --Phil. iii. ll.

    By no means, or By no manner of means, not at all; certainly not; not in any degree.

    The wine on this side of the lake is by no means so good as that on the other.
    --Addison.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
mean

"intend, have in mind," Old English mænan "to mean, intend, signify; tell, say; complain, lament," from West Germanic *mainijan (cognates: Old Frisian mena "to signify," Old Saxon menian "to intend, signify, make known," Dutch menen, German meinen "think, suppose, be of the opinion"), from PIE *meino- "opinion, intent" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic meniti "to think, have an opinion," Old Irish mian "wish, desire," Welsh mwyn "enjoyment"), perhaps from root *men- "think" (see mind (n.)). Conversational question you know what I mean? attested by 1834.

mean

"that which is halfway between extremes," early 14c., from Old French meien "middle, means, intermediary," noun use of adjective from Latin medianus "of or that is in the middle" (see mean (adj.2)). Oldest sense is musical; mathematical sense is from c.1500. Some senes reflect confusion with mean (adj.1). This is the mean in by no means (late 15c.).

mean

"calculate an arithmetical mean," 1882, from mean (n.).

mean

"occupying a middle or intermediate place," mid-14c., from Anglo-French meines (plural), Old French meien, variant of moiien "mid-, medium, common, middle-class" (12c., Modern French moyen), from Late Latin medianus "of the middle," from Latin medius "in the middle" (see medial (adj.)). Meaning "intermediate in time" is from mid-15c. Mathematical sense is from late 14c.

mean

"low-quality," c.1200, "shared by all," from imene, from Old English gemæne "common, public, general, universal, shared by all," from Proto-Germanic *ga-mainiz "possessed jointly" (cognates: Old Frisian mene, Old Saxon gimeni, Middle Low German gemeine, Middle Dutch gemene, Dutch gemeen, German gemein, Gothic gamains "common"), from PIE *ko-moin-i- "held in common," a compound adjective formed from collective prefix *ko- "together" (Proto-Germanic *ga-) + *moi-n-, suffixed form of PIE root *mei- (1) "to change, exchange" (see mutable). Compare second element in common (adj.), a word with a sense evolution parallel to that of this word.\n

Of things, "inferior, second-rate," from late 14c. (a secondary sense in Old English was "false, wicked"). Notion of "so-so, mediocre" led to confusion with mean (n.). Meaning "inferior in rank or status" (of persons) emerged early 14c.; that of "ordinary" from late 14c.; that of "stingy, nasty" first recorded 1660s; weaker sense of "disobliging, pettily offensive" is from 1839, originally American English slang. Inverted sense of "remarkably good" (i.e. plays a mean saxophone) first recorded c.1900, perhaps from phrase no mean _______ "not inferior" (1590s, also, "not average," reflecting further confusion with mean (n.)).

Wiktionary
mean

Etymology 1 vb. 1 To intend. 2 # (label en transitive) To intend, to plan (to do); to have as one's intention. (from 8th c.) 3 # (label en intransitive) To have intentions of a given kind. (from 14th c.) 4 # (label en transitive usually in passive) To intend (something) for a given purpose or fate; to predestine. (from 16th c.) 5 To convey meaning. 6 # (label en transitive) To convey (a given sense); to signify, or indicate (an object or idea). (from 8th c.) Etymology 2

  1. 1 (context obsolete English) common; general. 2 Of a common or low origin, grade, or quality; common; humble. 3 low in quality or degree; inferior; poor; shabby. 4 Without dignity of mind; destitute of honour; low-minded; spiritless; base. 5 Of little value or account; worthy of little or no regard; contemptible; despicable. 6 niggardly; penurious; miserly; stingy. 7 disobliging; pettily offensive or unaccommodating; small. 8 selfish; acting without consideration of others; unkind. Etymology 3

    a. 1 Having the mean (''see noun below'') as its value. 2 (context obsolete English) middling; intermediate; moderately good, tolerable. n. 1 (context now chiefly in the plural English) A method or course of action used to achieve some result. (from 14th c.) 2 (context obsolete in the singular English) An intermediate step or intermediate steps. 3 Something which is intermediate or in the middle; an intermediate value or range of values; a medium. (from 14th c.) 4 (context music now historical English) The middle part of three-part polyphonic music; now specifically, the alto part in polyphonic music; an alto instrument. (from 15th c.) 5 (context statistics English) The average of a set of values, calculated by summing them together and dividing by the number of terms; the arithmetic mean. (from 15th c.) 6 (context mathematics English) 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. 7 (context mathematics English) Either of the two numbers in the middle of a conventionally presented proportion, as ''2'' and ''3'' in ''1:2=3:6''. Etymology 4

    v

  2. 1 (context now Ireland UK regional English) To complain, lament. 2 (context now Ireland UK regional English) To pity; to comfort.

Related phrases:
WordNet
mean

  1. n. an average of n numbers computed by adding some function of the numbers and dividing by some function of n [syn: mean value]

  2. [also: meant]

mean

  1. adj. approximating the statistical norm or average or expected value; "the average income in New England is below that of the nation"; "of average height for his age"; "the mean annual rainfall" [syn: average, mean(a)]

  2. characterized by malice; "a hateful thing to do"; "in a mean mood" [syn: hateful]

  3. having or showing an ignoble lack of honor or morality; "that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble"- Edmund Burke; "taking a mean advantage"; "chok'd with ambition of the meaner sort"- Shakespeare; "something essentially vulgar and meanspirited in politics" [syn: base, meanspirited]

  4. excellent; "famous for a mean backhand"

  5. marked by poverty befitting a beggar; "a beggarly existence in the slums"; "a mean hut" [syn: beggarly]

  6. used of persons or behavior; characterized by or indicative of lack of generosity; "a mean person"; "he left a miserly tip" [syn: mingy, miserly, tight]

  7. used of sums of money; so small in amount as to deserve contempt [syn: beggarly]

  8. [also: meant]

mean

  1. v. mean or intend to express or convey; "You never understand what I mean!"; "what do his words intend?" [syn: intend]

  2. have as a logical consequence; "The water shortage means that we have to stop taking long showers" [syn: entail, imply]

  3. denote or connote; "`maison' means `house' in French"; "An example sentence would show what this word means" [syn: intend, signify, stand for]

  4. have in mind as a purpose; "I mean no harm"; "I only meant to help you"; "She didn't think to harm me"; "We thought to return early that night" [syn: intend, think]

  5. have a specified degree of importance; "My ex-husband means nothing to me"; "Happiness means everything"

  6. 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!" [syn: think of, have in mind]

  7. destine or designate for a certain purpose; "These flowers were meant for you"

  8. [also: meant]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Mean (magazine)

Mean (which stands for Music, Entertainment, Art, News) is an American bi-monthly magazine that covers a wide spectrum of pop culture, focusing on celebrities in the fields of music, fashion, art, and film.

MEAN (software bundle)

MEAN is a free and open-source JavaScript software stack for building dynamic web sites and web applications.

The MEAN stack makes use of MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js. Because all components of the MEAN stack support programs are written in JavaScript, MEAN applications can be written in one language for both server-side and client-side execution environments.

Mean

In mathematics, mean has several different definitions depending on the context.

In probability and statistics, mean and expected value are used synonymously to refer to one measure of the central tendency either of a probability distribution or of the random variable characterized by that distribution. In the case of a discrete probability distribution of a random variable X, the mean is equal to the sum over every possible value weighted by the probability of that value; that is, it is computed by taking the product of each possible value x of X and its probability P(x), and then adding all these products together, giving μ = ∑xP(x). An analogous formula applies to the case of a continuous probability distribution. Not every probability distribution has a defined mean; see the Cauchy distribution for an example. Moreover, for some distributions the mean is infinite: for example, when the probability of the value 2 is $\tfrac{1}{2^n}$ for n = 1, 2, 3, ....

For a data set, the terms arithmetic mean, mathematical expectation, and sometimes average are used synonymously to refer to a central value of a discrete set of numbers: specifically, the sum of the values divided by the number of values. The arithmetic mean of a set of numbers x, x, ..., x is typically denoted by x̄, pronounced "x bar". If the data set were based on a series of observations obtained by sampling from a statistical population, the arithmetic mean is termed the sample mean (denoted x̄) to distinguish it from the population mean (denoted μ or μ).

For a finite population, the population mean of a property is equal to the arithmetic mean of the given property while considering every member of the population. For example, the population mean height is equal to the sum of the heights of every individual divided by the total number of individuals. The sample mean may differ from the population mean, especially for small samples. The law of large numbers dictates that the larger the size of the sample, the more likely it is that the sample mean will be close to the population mean.

Outside of probability and statistics, a wide range of other notions of "mean" are often used in geometry and analysis; examples are given below.

Mean (album)

Mean is the fifth and final album by the California-based hard rock band Montrose and released in 1987. It has much more of a glam metal sound than previous Montrose albums.

According to Ronnie Montrose, singer Johnny Edwards and drummer James Kottak were still officially in the band Buster Brown at the time of the recording of Mean. They later played together in the first line-up of the band Wild Horses.

Guitarist Ronnie Montrose and bassist Glenn Letsch played together in the band Gamma both before and after this album.

It features the song "M for Machine" which was written as a potential song for the 1987 American cyberpunk action film RoboCop, directed by Paul Verhoeven.

Drummer James Kottak would go on to join the original line-up of hard rock/ glam metal band Kingdom Come, remaining with that band during their most commercially successful period, prior to reconnecting with Edwards in Wild Horses. After leaving Wild Horses, Edwards became the frontman for Foreigner on their 1991 album, Unusual Heat.

Mean (disambiguation)

Mean is a term used in mathematics and statistics.

Mean may also refer to:

  • Mean (magazine), an American bi-monthly magazine
  • Mean (album), an album by Montrose
  • "Mean" (song), a 2010 country song by Taylor Swift from Speak Now
  • "Mean", a song by Pink from Funhouse
  • Mean, a vocal music term from 15th and 16th century England
  • MEAN (software bundle), applications based on MongoDB, Express.js and Angular.js, all of which run upon Node.js
  • Meanness, a personal quality
  • Ethic mean, a sociology term
Mean (song)

"Mean" is a song written and recorded by American country pop singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her third studio album, Speak Now (2010). Produced by Swift alongside Nathan Chapman, the song was sent to country radio in the United States on March 11, 2011, as the third single from Speak Now. "Mean" garnered mixed reviews from critics for its lyrical detail and profound country sound. The song received commercial success in the United States and Canada, debuting at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number ten on the Canadian Hot 100. The song also appeared on the Australian Singles Chart at number 45.

The song's accompanying music video was directed by Declan Whitebloom, who developed the concept together with Swift. It received mixed reviews from critics who perceived ambivalent messages in the video, despite the prevalent self-empowerment and anti-bullying themes. "Mean" was performed for the first time by Swift at the 46th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards on April 3, 2011. The song won the Grammy Awards for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance at the 54th Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone ranked "Mean" at #24 on their list of the 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "mean".

Moreover, thou sayest it that the champions of the Dry Tree, who would think but little of an earl for a leader, are eager to follow me: and if thou still doubt what this may mean, abide, till in two days or three thou see me before the foeman.

If we only consider the mean or average effect in orbits nearly circular, this force may be considered as an ablatitious force at all distances below the mean, counterbalanced by an opposite effect at all distances above the mean.

Beside the cushion was a vacant throne, radiant as morning in the East, ablaze with devices in gold and gems, a seat to fill the meanest soul with sensations of majesty and tempt dervishes to the sitting posture.

This would mean, according to our present understanding of heredity, an inherited abnormality in one or more enzyme systems and a metabolism that is therefore disordered in some specific manner.

Finally, he points out the practical bearing of the subject--for example, the probability of calculus causing sudden suppression of urine in such cases--and also the danger of surgical interference, and suggests the possibility of diagnosing the condition by ascertaining the absence of the opening of one ureter in the bladder by means of the cystoscope, and also the likelihood of its occurring where any abnormality of the genital organs is found, especially if this be unilateral.

The secrecy surrounding his operations meant that he must keep it aboard, since only in his cabin was the money safe from awkward questions.

I mean, our own government had terrible policies for Aboriginal people.

All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every cut or abrasion practically means another yaw.

An attempt to abscond could mean three months and a hundred lashes in addition.

I mean, why take his word for it that he caught your father abusing you?

Assuming one-twentieth gee, that meant the rock had been accelerating for only ten or eleven minutes.

She was trapped without a ship or a radio aboard an asteroid that was accelerating smoothly to absurdly high velocities by means she could not understand.

In organ music the acciaccatura is still taken to mean that the embellishing tone and the melody tone are to be sounded together, the former being then instantly released, while the latter is held to its full time-value.

One of the ways a correct burial was achieved was by means of a special board, on which a spoon was spun.

Such treatment by the authorities soon led some socialist leaders to despair of ever achieving their goals by parliamentary means and to embrace more radical ideologies, such as syndicalism and anarchism.