「…力が、足りめ」

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.

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.

brunosprak said:

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.

Click to expand...

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)

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?

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.

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