MEANNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does meanness mean? 

• MEANNESS (noun)
  The noun MEANNESS has 2 senses:

1. the quality of being deliberately mean

2. extreme stinginess

  Familiarity information: MEANNESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MEANNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being deliberately mean

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

beastliness; meanness

Hypernyms ("meanness" is a kind of...):

malevolence; malevolency; malice (the quality of threatening evil)

Derivation:

mean ((used of persons or behavior) characterized by or indicative of lack of generosity)

mean (characterized by malice)

mean (having or showing an ignoble lack of honor or morality)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Extreme stinginess

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

closeness; meanness; minginess; niggardliness; niggardness; parsimoniousness; parsimony; tightfistedness; tightness

Hypernyms ("meanness" is a kind of...):

stinginess (a lack of generosity; a general unwillingness to part with money)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "meanness"):

littleness; pettiness; smallness (lack of generosity in trifling matters)

miserliness (total lack of generosity with money)

Derivation:

mean ((used of sums of money) so small in amount as to deserve contempt)

mean ((used of persons or behavior) characterized by or indicative of lack of generosity)

 Context examples 

I had been hitherto, all my life, a stranger to courts, for which I was unqualified by the meanness of my condition.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

“He's a monster of meanness!” said my aunt.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell of your own meanness.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Well, they were honest eyes, he concluded, and in them was neither smallness nor meanness.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Undoubtedly, replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed, there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

John is above such meanness, and I won't listen to you a minute if you talk so, cried Meg indignantly, forgetting everything but the injustice of the old lady's suspicions.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of;—and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty—which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much—I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

We shall probably see much to wish altered in her, and must prepare ourselves for gross ignorance, some meanness of opinions, and very distressing vulgarity of manner; but these are not incurable faults; nor, I trust, can they be dangerous for her associates.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

That Lucy had certainly meant to deceive, to go off with a flourish of malice against him in her message by Thomas, was perfectly clear to Elinor; and Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton ill-nature.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)