meinen

From Middle High German meinen, from Old High German meinen, from Proto-Germanic *mainijaną (“to mean, think; lament”).

Germanic cognates include Bavarian manan, moana, West Frisian miene (“to deem, think”) (Old Frisian mēna (“to signify”)), Dutch menen (“to believe, think, mean”) (Middle Dutch menen (“to think, intend”)), English mean, Old Saxon mēnian. Indo-European cognates include Old Irish mían (“wish, desire”) and Polish mienić (“to signify, believe”). Related to moan.

• meynen, mainen, maynen (obsolete)

• IPA^(key): /ˈmaɪ̯nən/, [ˈmaɪ̯nən], [ˈmaɪ̯nn̩]

• Audio:

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• Audio:

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meinen (weak, third-person singular present meint, past tense meinte, past participle gemeint, auxiliary haben)

1. to opine, to think; to believe; to suppose

   Synonyms: denken, glauben

   Ich meine, das war letztes oder vorletztes Jahr.

   I think it was last year or the year before.

2. to say; to utter; not used with nouns; not used in the imperative and rarely in the infinitive

   Synonym: sagen

   Entschuldige, was meintest du gerade?

   Sorry, what did you just say?

3. to mean; to be convinced or sincere about something

   Das sagt er nicht nur, das meint er auch.

   He doesn’t just say it, he means it.

4. to mean; to have in mind; to convey

   Was meintest du damit?

   What did you mean by that?

   Meinst du das rote oder das gelbe Haus?

   Do you mean the red or the yellow house?

5. (now rare) to mean; to signify

   Synonyms: bedeuten, heißen

   Was meint dieses Wort?

   What does this word mean?

• Meinung
• vermeinen

Inflected form of mein.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmaɪ̯nən/, [ˈmaɪ̯nən], [ˈmaɪ̯nn̩] (standard)
• IPA^(key): /maɪ̯n/ (common, colloquial)
• Homophone: mein (nonstandard)

meinen m sg or pl

1. (possessive) inflection of mein:
   1. accusative masculine singular
   2. dative plural

• In colloquial spoken German, the masculine nominative forms mein, dein, kein, etc may not be distinguished from the accusative forms meinen, deinen, keinen etc in adjectival use. The distinction is maintained in substantival use, i.e. without a following noun.

• “meinen” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
• “meinen” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon
• “meinen” in Duden online
• “meinen” in OpenThesaurus.de

From Proto-Germanic *mainijaną.

meinen

1. to mean, think, name

1. Köbler, Gerhard, Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, (6. Auflage) 2014