mien - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From French mine (“appearance”) (whence also Danish mine and German Miene), perhaps from Breton min (“face of an animal”), or from Latin minio (“to redden”).[1]

mien (countable and uncountable, plural miens)

  1. (countable, uncountable) Demeanor; facial expression or attitude, especially one which is intended by its bearer.
    • 1847, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Threnody”, in Poems, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, →OCLC, page 238:
      Gentlest Guardians marked serene / His early hope, his liberal mien; […]
    • 1856, Joseph Turnley, The Language of the Eye, →OCLC, page 111:
      Beauty, like all divine gifts, is everywhere to be seen by the eye of the faithful admirer of nature; and, like all spirits, she is scarcely to be described by words. Her countenance and mien, her path, her hue and carriage, often surpass expression, and soothe the enthusiast into reverie and silence.
    • 1860, Stephen Foster, “Jenny's coming o'er the green”‎[1]:
      Jenny's coming o'er the green, / Fairer form was never seen, / Winning is her gentle mien; / Why do I love her so?
    • 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Incident at the Window”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 63:
      [T]aking the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.
    • 2015 July 23, Siobhan Roberts, “John Horton Conway: the world’s most charismatic mathematician”, in The Guardian‎[2]:
      Although still young at heart and head, he looks more and more like his old friend Archimedes, increasingly bearded and increasingly grey, with an otherworldly mien – a look that should earn him a spot in the online quiz featuring portraits of frumpy old men under the rubric “Prof or Hobo?”
  2. (countable) A specific facial expression.
    • 2007 February 10, Claudia La Rocco, “Stony Miens and Sad Hearts”, in New York Times‎[3]:
      It’s hard to say which is worse: the press-on smiles favored by many a ballet dancer, or the stony “I’m going to pretend this isn’t happening to me” miens often found in contemporary troupes like White Road.

demeanor; facial expression or attitude, especially one which is intended by its bearer

specific facial expression

  1. ^ Le Robert pour tous, Dictionnaire de la langue française, Janvier 2004, p. 727, mine1

Inherited from Middle French mien, from Old French meon, from Latin meum, the neuter of meus.

mien (feminine mienne, masculine plural miens, feminine plural miennes)

  1. (dated) (of) mine, my own
    Un mien ami.
    A friend of mine.
    Cette découverte est mienne.
    This discovery is my own.

mien f (plural miene)

  1. Veldeke spelling of Minn

Latin meum.

mien

  1. (stressed) my; mine

From English main.

mien

  1. main

From Middle Low German mîn, from Old Saxon mīn, from Proto-West Germanic *mīn.

mien

  1. my
    Dee Oabeida es miena, dee Kjäakjsche es miene un daut Hus es mient.
    That worker is mine, that maid is mine, and that house is mine.

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

mien

  1. feminine of min
  2. neuter of min
  3. plural of min

mien f

  1. genitive plural of mena

mien n

  1. genitive plural of meno

mien f

  1. carrot

From Old Frisian gemēne, from Proto-West Germanic *gamainī, from Proto-Germanic *gamainiz, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱom-moynis. Cognate with German gemein, English mean, Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌼𐌰𐌹𐌽𐍃 (gamains) and Latin commūnis.

mien

  1. common, communal
  2. common, everyday
  3. general
Inflection of mien
uninflected mien
inflected miene
comparative miendermiener
positive comparative superlative
predicative/adverbial mien miendermiener it mienstit mienste
indefinite c. sing. miene mienderemienere mienste
n. sing. mien miendermiener mienste
plural miene mienderemienere mienste
definite miene mienderemienere mienste
partitive miens miendersmieners —