How to spell mean

hear itmean/min/adjectiveSilent and tricky

What it means: Unkind or cruel in behavior.

In a sentence: The mean cat hissed at the dog.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as meen or mene.

Same family: meanness, meanly, stingy, miserly, underpay. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: This sense of "mean" comes from an older meaning in English and French that suggested something low in rank or value; over time, it shifted to describe amounts of money so small that they seem contemptible or stingy.

Try spelling it

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Words like this

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