meed
Pronunciation
  • (British, GA) IPA: /miːd/
Noun

meed (plural meeds)

  1. (now literary, archaic) A payment or recompense made for services rendered or in recognition of some achievement; reward, deserts; award.
    • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.i:
      For well she wist, as true it was indeed, / That her liues Lord and patrone of her health / Right well deserued as his duefull meed, / Her loue, her seruice, and her vtmost wealth.
    • 1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer:
      Brought up in darkness, and the child of sin,
      Yet, as the meed of spotless innocence,
      Just Heaven permitted her by one good deed
      To work her own redemption, after death.
    • 1829, Andrew Jackson, First Annual Message to Congress:
      Public gratitude, therefore, stamps her seal upon it, and the meed should not be withheld which may here after operate as a stimulus to our gallant tars.
    • 1880, translation by Richard Francis Burton of Os Lusiadas, Canto IX, stanza 93 by Luís de Camões
      Better to merit and the meed to miss,
      than, lacking merit, every meed possess.
  2. A gift; bribe.
  3. (dated) Merit or desert; worth.
    • c 1591, William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 3, Act 4, Scene VIII
      My meed hath got me fame.
    • 1934, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Commentary on The Holy Qur'an, note 3687 on 33:16:
      In any case, his life would be in ignominy and would be brief, and he would have lost irretrievably the meed of valour.
Verb

meed (meeds, present participle meeding; past and past participle meeded)

  1. (transitive) To reward; bribe.
  2. (transitive) To deserve; merit.



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