Foul vs Mean - What's the difference?

foul | mean | Related terms |

Foul is a related term of mean.

As nouns the difference between foul and mean

is that foul is foul (a breach of the rules of a game) while mean is middle.

As an adjective mean is

mid, central.

foul

English

(Webster 1913)

Etymology 1

From (etyl), from (etyl) . More at (l).

Adjective

(er)

Covered with, or containing unclean matter; polluted; nasty; defiled

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-29, volume=407, issue=8842, page=29, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Unspontaneous combustion , passage=Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.}}

obscene or profane; abusive.

Hateful; detestable; unpleasant

* Milton

Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?

Loathsome; disgusting; as, a foul disease.

(obsolete) Ugly; homely; poor.

* Shakespeare

Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares.

Not favorable; unpropitious; not fair or advantageous; as, a foul wind; a foul road; cloudy or rainy; stormy; not fair; -- said of the weather, sky, etc.

* Shakespeare

So foul a sky clears not without a storm.

Not conforming to the established rules and customs of a game, conflict, test, etc.; unfair; dishonest; dishonorable; cheating.

(nautical) Having freedom of motion interfered with by collision or entanglement; entangled; - opposed to clear; as, a rope or cable may get foul while paying it out.

(baseball) Outside of the base lines; in foul territory.

Usage notes

* Nouns to which "foul" is often applied: play, ball, language, breath, smell, odor, water, weather, deed.

Synonyms

* shameful; odious; wretched

Derived terms

* afoul * befoul * fall foul * nonfoul * nonfouling

Etymology 2

From (etyl) .

Verb

(en verb)

To make dirty.

to foul the face or hands with mire

She's fouled her diaper.

To besmirch.

He's fouled his reputation.

To clog or obstruct.

The hair has fouled the drain.

(nautical) To entangle.

The kelp has fouled the prop.

(basketball) To make contact with an opposing player in order to gain advantage.

Smith fouled him hard.

(baseball) To hit outside of the baselines.

Jones fouled the ball off the facing of the upper deck.

To become clogged.

''The drain fouled .

To become entangled.

The prop fouled on the kelp.

(basketball) To commit a foul.

Smith fouled within the first minute of the quarter.

(baseball) To hit a ball outside of the baselines.

Jones fouled for strike one.

Noun

(en noun)

(sports) A breach of the rules of a game, especially one involving inappropriate contact with an opposing player in order to gain an advantage; as, for example, foot-tripping in soccer, or contact of any kind in basketball.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=December 10 , author=Arindam Rej , title=Norwich 4 - 2 Newcastle , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=A second Norwich goal in four minutes arrived after some dire Newcastle defending. Gosling gave the ball away with a sloppy back-pass, allowing Crofts to curl in a cross that the unmarked Morison powered in with a firm, 12-yard header.
Gosling's plight worsened when he was soon shown a red card for a foul on Martin.}}

(bowling) A (usually accidental) contact between a bowler and the lane before the bowler has released the ball.

(baseball) A foul ball, a ball which has been hit outside of the base lines.

Jones hit a foul up over the screen.

External links

* * * ----

mean

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) (m), from (etyl) .

Verb

To intend.

# (label) To intend, to plan (to do); to have as one's intention.

# (label) To have intentions of a given kind.

To convey meaning.

# (label) To convey (a given sense); to signify, or indicate (an object or idea).

#* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838

, page=5 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist) , title= A better waterworks , passage=An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic the way real kidneys cleanse blood and eject impurities and surplus water as urine.}}

# (label) Of a word, symbol etc: to have reference to, to signify.

A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means'. This in turn leads to the somewhat more formal guideline of including a term if it is '''attested''' and ' idiomatic .

(label) To have conviction in (something said or expressed); to be sincere in (what one says).

(label) To result in; to bring about.

* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 19, author=Paul fletcher, work=BBC Sport

, title= Blackpool 1-2 West Ham , passage=It was a goal that meant West Ham won on their first appearance at Wembley in 31 years, in doing so becoming the first team since Leicester in 1996 to bounce straight back to the Premier League through the play-offs.}}

*{{quote-magazine, date=2014-06-14, volume=411, issue=8891, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= It's a gas , passage=One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains.

(label) To be important (to).

Synonyms

* (convey, signify, indicate ): convey, indicate, signify * (want or intend to convey ): imply, mean to say * (intend; plan on doing ): intend * (have conviction in what one says ): be serious * (have intentions of a some kind ): * (result in; bring about ): bring about, cause, lead to, result in

Etymology 2

From (etyl) (m), (m), from (etyl) ((etyl) (m)).

Adjective

(er)

(obsolete) Common; general.

Of a common or low origin, grade, or quality; common; humble.

Low in quality or degree; inferior; poor; shabby.

Without dignity of mind; destitute of honour; low-minded; spiritless; base.

a mean motive

* Dryden

Can you imagine I so mean could prove, / To save my life by changing of my love?

Of little value or account; worthy of little or no regard; contemptible; despicable.

* J. Philips

The Roman legions and great Caesar found / Our fathers no mean foes.

Niggardly; penurious; miserly; stingy.

Disobliging; pettily offensive or unaccommodating; small.

Selfish; acting without consideration of others; unkind.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=20 citation , passage=The story struck the depressingly familiar note with which true stories ring in the tried ears of experienced policemen. No one queried it. It was in the classic pattern of human weakness, mean and embarrassing and sad.}}

Causing or intending to cause intentional harm; bearing ill will towards another; cruel; malicious.

Powerful; fierce; harsh; damaging.

Accomplished with great skill; deft; hard to compete with.

(informal, often, childish) Difficult, tricky.

Synonyms

* (causing or intending to cause intentional harm ): cruel, malicious, nasty, spiteful * See also * (acting without consideration of others ): selfish, unkind, vile, ignoble * (powerful ): damaging, fierce, harsh, strong * (accomplished with great skill; deft; hard to compete with''): deft, skilful (''UK''), skillful (''US ), top-notch * (inferior''): cheap, grotty (slang), inferior, low-quality, naff (''UK slang ), rough and ready, shoddy, tacky (informal)

Derived terms

* meandom * meanie * meanness * meany

Etymology 3

From (etyl) (m), from (etyl) (m) ((etyl) (m)), . Cognate with (m).

Adjective

(-)

Having the mean (see noun below ) as its value.

(obsolete) Middling; intermediate; moderately good, tolerable.

*, II.ii.2:

I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is […].

* Sir Philip Sidney

being of middle age and a mean stature

* Milton

according to the fittest style of lofty, mean , or lowly

Derived terms

* mean distance * mean time * mean solar time * mean sun

Noun

(wikipedia mean) (en noun)

* 1603 , John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays , II.5:

To say truth, it is a meane full of uncertainty and danger.

* Coleridge

You may be able, by this mean , to review your own scientific acquirements.

* Sir W. Hamilton

Philosophical doubt is not an end, but a mean .

* 2011 , "Rival visions", The Economist , 14 Apr 2011:

Mr Obama produced an only slightly less ambitious goal for deficit reduction than the House Republicans, albeit working from a more forgiving baseline: $4 trillion over 12 years compared to $4.4 trillion over 10 years. But the means by which he would achieve it are very different.

(obsolete, in the singular) An intermediate step or intermediate steps.

* a.'' 1563 , Thomas Harding, "To the Reader", in ''The Works of John Jewel (1845 ed.)

Verily in this treatise this hath been mine only purpose; and the mean to bring the same to effect hath been such as whereby I studied to profit wholesomely, not to please delicately.

* 1606 , The Trials of Robert Winter, Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Rob. Keyes, Thomas Bates, and Sir Everard Digby, at Westminster, for High Treason, being Conspirators in the Gunpowder-Plot

That it was lawful and meritorious to kill and destroy the king, and all the said hereticks. — The mean to effect it, they concluded to be, that, 1. The king, the queen, the prince, the lords spiritual and temporal, the knights and burgoses of the parliament, should be blown up with powder. 2. That the whole royal issue male should be destroyed. S. That they would lake into their custody Elizabeth and Mary the king's daughters, and proclaim the lady Elizabeth queen. 4. That they should feign a Proclamation in the name of Elizabeth, in which no mention should be made of alteration of religion, nor that they were parties to the treason, until they had raised power to perform the same; and then to proclaim, all grievances in the kingdom should be reformed.

* a.'' 1623 ,

Apply desperate physic: / We must not now use balsamum, but fire, / The smarting cupping-glass, for that's the mean / To purge infected blood, such blood as hers.

Something which is intermediate or in the middle; an intermediate value or range of values; a medium.

* 1875 , William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, editors, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities'', , volume 1, page 10, s.v. ''Accentus Ecclesiasticus ,

It presents a sort of mean between speech and song, continually inclining towards the latter, never altogether leaving its hold on the former; it is speech, though always attuned speech, in passages of average interest and importance; it is song, though always distinct and articulate song, in passages demanding more fervid utterance.

* 1624 , John Smith, Generall Historie , in Kupperman 1988, p. 147:

Of these [rattles] they have Base, Tenor, Countertenor, Meane , and Treble.

(statistics) The average of a set of values, calculated by summing them together and dividing by the number of terms; the arithmetic mean.

(mathematics) Any function of multiple variables that satisfies certain properties and yields a number representative of its arguments; or, the number so yielded; a measure of central tendency.

* 1997 , Angus Deaton, The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy ,^] World Bank Publications, ISBN 9780801852541, [http://books.google.com/books?id=5Lp_p6bLD2IC&pg=PA51&dq=mean page 51:

Note that (1.41) is simply the probability-weighted mean without any explicit allowance for the stratification; each observation is weighted by its inflation factor and the total divided by the total of the inflation factors for the survey.

* 2002 , Clifford A. Pickover, The Mathematics of Oz: Mental Gymnastics from Beyond the Edge , Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521016780, page 246:

Luckily, even though the arithmetic mean' is unusable, both the harmonic and geometric ' means settle to precise values as the amount of data increases.

* 2003 , P. S. Bullen, Handbook of Means and Their Inequalities , Springer, ISBN 978-1-4020-1522-9, page 251:

The generalized power means' include power '''means''', certain Gini '''means''', in particular the counter-harmonic ' means .

(mathematics) Either of the two numbers in the middle of a conventionally presented proportion, as 2'' and ''3'' in ''1:2=3:6 .

* 1825 , John Farrar, translator, An Elementary Treatise on Arithmetic by Silvestre François Lacroix, third edition, page 102,

...if four numbers be in proportion, the product of the first and last, or of the two extremes, is equal to the product of the second and third, or of the two means .

* 1999 , Dawn B. Sova, How to Solve Word Problems in Geometry , McGraw-Hill, ISBN 007134652X, page 85,

Using the means'-extremes property of proportions, you know that the product of the extremes equals the product of the '''means'''. The ratio ''t''/4 = 5/2 can be rewritten as ''t'':4 = 5:2, in which the extremes are ''t'' and 2, and the ' means are 4 and 5.

* 2007 , Carolyn C. Wheater, Homework Helpers: Geometry , Career Press, ISBN 1564147215, page 99,

In $\frac{18}{27}=\frac23$ , the product of the means is $2\cdot27$ , and the product of the extremes is $18\cdot3$ . Both products are 54.

Hypernyms

* (statistics) measure of central tendency, measure of location, sample statistic

Coordinate terms

* (statistics) median, mode

Derived terms

* arithmetic mean * * Chisini mean * contraharmonic mean * generalised f -mean * generalized f -mean * geometric mean * harmonic mean * Heronian mean * * logarithmic mean * power mean * quadratic mean * quasi-arithmetic mean * root mean square

Etymology 4

From (etyl) (m), from (etyl) ; see (l).

Verb

To complain, lament.

To pity; to comfort.

* 1485 , Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur , Book XII:

Anone he meaned hym, and wolde have had hym home unto his ermytage.

Statistics

Anagrams

* (l), (l), (l), (l), (l), (l), (l), (l) English irregular verbs English terms with multiple etymologies 1000 English basic words ----