「…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...! :relief:

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. Here is a image of the text:
http img24.imageshack.us/img24/9089/phrase.png
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 :cool: