「…力が、足りめ」

[brunosprak]

Hello, everyone!
I found this sentence 「…力が、足りめ」 and I wanted to understand it better. 力 is strength (or power), 足りる (and also 足る) means "to be sufficient, to be enough".
So, I have two questions:
1) In this phrase, which of the two verbs (足りる/足る) is being actually used?
2) What is the meaning of め on it? It seems it makes the clause a negative phrase. How does this work?

Every comment is welcome,
Thank you.

 

[Toritoribe]

Probably you misheard or did typo. It should be 足りね(え/ぇ).
And yes, it's the contraction of 足りない, the negative form of 足りる used by male. 足る is the archaic form of 足りる.

 

[undrentide]

Hello, everyone!
I found this sentence 「…力が、足りめ」 and I wanted to understand it better. 力 is strength (or power), 足りる (and also 足る) means "to be sufficient, to be enough".
So, I have two questions:
1) In this phrase, which of the two verbs (足りる/足る) is being actually used?
2) What is the meaning of め on it? It seems it makes the clause a negative phrase. How does this work?

Every comment is welcome,
Thank you.

Whoever wrote the sentence, even by a native speaker,
足りめ sounds so wrong to me...!

But if it is 足りなめ, then it makes sense.
足りない (not enough, lack) + め ＝ 足りなめ
On the short side, tends to be lacking, etc.

There are several usage of this め：

(1) adjective + め : to show tendency, feature
厚い＋め : 厚め rather thick
多い＋め : 多め rather many
長い＋め : 長め rather long, longish
少ない＋め : rather small (in quantity)

足りなめ belongs here.

(2) verb + め : to show that something is in that state
落ちる＋め ＝ 落ちめ（おちめ） on a decline
弱る＋め ＝ 弱り目（よわりめ） in misfortune
控える＋め ＝ 控えめ（ひかえめ） modest, decent

(3) verb + め : to show the point of it
縫う＋め ＝ 縫い目（ぬいめ） seam (=where one sewed)

 

[brunosprak]

Hi, thank you for the answers and for the long explanation undrentide.
Based on what Toritoribe said, I checked if what I typed was correct, but now I'm not sure of it.

Would it be 足りぬ instead of 足りめ? If so, does this help or just complicates even more?

 

[Toritoribe]

足りぬ is correct. It's the archaic form of 足りない. ぬ is the archaic auxiliary verb to negate a verb, as same as ない in modern Japanese.

 

[brunosprak]

Oh, I didn't know that! Very interesting. Thank you