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hean.

Mean; abject; poor; humble; lowly.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/hiːn/
  1. Mean; abject; poor; humble; lowly.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English hene, from Old English hēan (“lowly, despised, poor, mean, bare, abject”), from Proto-Germanic *hauniz (“low, lowly”), from Proto-Indo-European *kaw- (“to degrade, humiliate”). Cognate with German höhn (“jeering, demeaning, bad”), Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌿𐌽𐍃 (hauns, “contemptible, base, humble”), Dutch hoon (“scorn, insult”), Latvian kauns (“shame, disgrace, dishonour”), Ancient Greek καυνός (kaunós, “bad”).

verb/hiːn/
  1. To treat with contumely; insult; humiliate; debase; lower.

    obsolete · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English henen, from Old English hīenan (“to fell, prostrate, overcome, weaken, crush, afflict, injure, oppress, abase, humble, insult, accuse, condemn”), from Proto-West Germanic *haunijan, from Proto-Germanic *haunijaną (“to humiliate”), from Proto-Indo-European *kaw- (“to degrade, humiliate”). Cognate with North Frisian huynjen (“to wound, abuse, hurt”), German höhnen (“to mock, jeer, scoff”) Swedish hån (“heckle, mocking”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.