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''meek'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260919121947-00-⌔

meek - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

meek (comparative meeker, superlative meekest)

  • Humble, non- boastful, modest, meager, or self-effacing.
    • ✤ Synonyms: abased, demure, verecund; see also Thesaurus: humble
    • ✤ Blessed are the meeke: for they shall inherit the earth.1
    • ✤ Mrs. Wickam was a meek woman…who was always ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else…2
  • Submissive, dispirited, cowed.
    • ✤ Synonyms: compliant, passive; abject, servile; see also Thesaurus: docile, Thesaurus: servile
    • ✤ What if they were wolves instead of lambs? They’d eat her all the sooner if she was meek to them. Fight or be eaten.3

Verb

meek (third-person singular simple present meeks, present participle meeking, simple past and past participle meeked)

  • (US) To tame; to break (a horse)

Etymology

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 (mússomai, “to blow the nose”), Sanskrit मु॒ञ्चति॑ (muñcáti, “to release, let loose”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /miːk/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (General American) IPA: /mik/
  • Rhymes: -iːk

Printed 2026-09-19.

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Footnotes

  1. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 5:5: ↩

  2. 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “Chapter 8”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC: ↩