These words are alike in describing persons or actions regarded as being far below common worth or dignity. Ignoble and mean originally meant of low birth but they are seldom used today to refer to social status. Ignoble denotes a lack or loss of noble or praiseworthy qualities, and frequently implies a failure to meet ordinarily accepted standards of worth or excellence: the ignoble betrayal of a trust. Mean suggests a contemptible smallness of mind, or a petty, ungenerous nature: the repeat mean gossip. Beggarly , cheap and shabby are close to mean in connotation, each suggesting the same nasty, sordid vulgarity. While ignoble could possibly describe the act of a person from whom we might expect a better sort of conduct, mean , beggarly , cheap and shabby describe persons or actions for which we feel only scorn and disdain: a miserly landlord’s beggarly treatment of an indigent tenant; the cheap quarrelling of two brothers whose father had died intestate; the shabby charges and counter-charged of rival political candidates. Base and low are alike in being strong words used to condemn that which is openly evil, selfish, dishonourable or otherwise unmoral. As with mean , beggarly or cheap , the character or action which is described as base or low is worthy only of contempt: a soldier guilty of base cowardice; a petty crook who was low enough to swindle a sick widow out of her life’s savings.