meek

CEFRC1

/miːk/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Quiet, gentle, and unwilling to argue or fight.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Submissive, dispirited, cowed.

Examples

  • Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

  • The strong shall devour the meek's reward.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
4
Parts of speech
1
Citations
2
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • /mik/

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. To tame; to break (a horse)

  2. Humble, non-boastful, modest, meager, or self-effacing.

More examples

In context

  • They subjugate the meek.

  • Blessed are the meeke: for they shall inherit the earth.

  • Mrs. Wickam was a meek woman...who was always ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else...

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The quiet child was very blank and never raised her hand in class.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

From Middle English meek, meke, meoc, probably a borrowing from Old Norse mjúkr (“soft; meek”), from Proto-Germanic *meukaz, *mūkaz (“soft; supple”), from Proto-Indo-European *mewg-, *mewk- (“slick, slippery; to slip”); compare Old English smēag (“subtle, stealthy, etc.”) and smūgan. Cognate with Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk mjuk (“soft”), Norwegian Bokmål myk (“soft”), and Danish myg (“supple”), Dutch muik (“soft, overripe”), dialectal German mauch (“dry and decayed, rotten”), Mauche (“malanders”). Compare as well Welsh mwyth (“soft, weak”), Latin ēmungō (“to blow one's nose”), Tocharian A muk- (“to let go, give up”), Lithuanian mùkti (“to slip away from”), Ancient Greek μύσσομαι (mússoma...