mean

1. (obsolete) Common; general.obsolete

2. (now rare) Of a common or low origin, grade, or quality; common; humble.Examples: "a man of mean parentage"; "a mean abode"; "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."archaic

3. (chiefly UK) Ungenerous; stingy; tight-fisted.Examples: "He's so mean. I've never seen him spend so much as five pounds on presents for his children."Synonyms: as tight as Dick's hatband, cheap, cheeseparing, chintzy, close, close as wax, close-fisted, illiberalUK

4. (colloquial) Hearty; spicy.Examples: "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."; "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."colloquial

5. (colloquial) Accomplished with great skill; deft; hard to compete with.Examples: "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]"Synonyms: deft, skillful, top-notchcolloquial

6. (informal, often childish) Difficult, tricky.Examples: "This problem is mean!"childishinformaloften

1. (obsolete) Middling; intermediate; moderately good, tolerable.Examples: "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 […]."; "being of middle age and a mean stature"; "according to the fittest style of lofty, mean, or lowly"not-comparableobsolete

1. (now chiefly in the plural form means, also in a singular sense) A method or course of action used to achieve some result.Examples: "To say truth, it is a meane full of uncertainty and danger."; "You may be able, by this mean, to review your own scientific acquirements."; "Philosophical doubt is not an end, but a mean."also

2. (obsolete, in the singular) An intermediate step or intermediate steps.Examples: "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."; "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."; "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."obsoletesingular

3. (music, now historical) The middle part of three-part polyphonic music; now specifically, the alto part in polyphonic music; an alto instrument.Examples: "Of these [rattles] they have Base, Tenor, Countertenor, Meane, and Treble."historical

4. (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.Examples: "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."; "Luckily, even though the arithmetic mean is unusable, both the harmonic and geometric means settle to precise values as the amount of data increases."; "The generalized power means include power means, certain Gini means, in particular the counter-harmonic means."

5. (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.Synonyms: arithmetic mean, average

6. (mathematics) Either of the two numbers in the middle of a conventionally presented proportion, as 2 and 3 in 1:2=3:6.Examples: "...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."; "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."; "In #92;frac#123;18#125;#123;27#125;#61;#92;frac23, the product of the means is 2#92;cdot27, and the product of the extremes is 18#92;cdot3. Both products are 54."Synonyms: geometric mean, mean proportional

1. (web development) Acronym of MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, Node.js: a software stack for developing web sites with both client-side and server-side use of JavaScript.abbreviationacronymalt-of