How do you pronounce hean?

The recorded pronunciation is /hiːn/.

Where does hean come from?

It is traced to Middle English.

hean

/hiːn/

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.68 in modern English

Syllables: hean
IPA: /hiːn/

Scrabble Score

Letters

Syllables

Unique Chars

Meaning

adj

Mean; abject; poor; humble; lowly.

Obsolete

verb

To treat with contumely; insult; humiliate; debase; lower.

Obsolete; Transitive verb

Etymology

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”).

Origin

Source language: Middle English

Word Breakdown

Root: hene, hēan, *hauniz, *kaw-, henen, hīenan

Usage

Inflected Forms

more hean (comparative) most hean (superlative) hene (alternative) heans (present, singular) heaning (participle, present) heaned (participle, past) heaned (past)

Derived Forms

heanling

Rhymes With

been between mean seen green clean scene machine queen screen magazine golden mean