Not in the least

Definition

least / li:st / indef det, indef pron (က) အနည္းဆံုး။ ( det ) He’s the best teacher, even though he has the least experience. ❍ She aims to make as much money as possible with the least amount of effort. ❍ MUCH 1 (ခ) ( pron ) အနည္းဆံုး။ အေရးမပါဆံုး။ ယုတ္စြအဆံုး။ She gave (the) least of all towards the wedding present. ❍ That’s the least of my worries (ie I have many more important things to worry about)! ❍ It’s the least I can do to help (ie I feel I should do more). adv အနည္းဆံုး။ မ (ေမွ်ာ္လင့္၊ တတ္ႏိုင္စသည္)ဆံုး။ just when we least expected it ❍ affecting the people who can least afford it ❍ She chose the least expensive of the hotels. ❍ one of the least performed of Shakespeare’s plays. ❏ at least [ IDM ] ၁။ အနည္းဆံုး။ at least 3 months / £ 5 / 10 inches ❍ Cut the grass at least once a week in summer. ❍ I’ve known her at least as long as you have. ၂။ ယုတ္စြအဆံုး။ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္။ She may be slow but at least she’s reliable. ❍ At least, he thought, they wouldn’t be bored this year. ၃။ ဘယ္လိုျဖစ္ျဖစ္။ ဘယ္နည္းႏွင့္မဆို။ ယုတ္စြအဆံုး။ အနည္းဆံုး။ Let’s at least give this approach a try. ❏ at the (very) least [ IDM ] အနည္းဆံုး။ It’ll take a year, at the very least. ❏ least of all [ IDM ] (ေၾကာင့္ၾကဖို႔) မရိွဆံုး။ Nobody need worry about losing their job, you least of all/ least of all you. ❏ not in the least [ IDM ] လံုးဝမဟုတ္ေသာ။ Really, I’m not in the least tired. တကယ္ပါ၊ နည္းနည္းမွ် မေမာပါဘူး။ ❍ ‘Would you mind if I put the television on?’ ‘No, not in the least. ’ ကိစၥမရိွပါဘူး။ ❏ not least [ IDM ] အထူးသျဖင့္။ The documentary caused a lot of bad feeling, not least among the workers whose lives it described.

Examples

1. The President seemed to be the one who knew least about the crisis.
2. He wonders why his most popular songs are always the ones he spends the least time on.
3. I earn the least out of all of us.
4. He’s a light sleeper and wakes up at the least noise.
5. You don’t have the least notion of how I’m feeling at the moment.
6. I doubt anything you say will make the least difference to what he does.
7. [the least of something] : I’ll have to pay for the ticket
8. but that’s the least of my worries.
9. Money is the least of my problems right now.
10. The least you can do is listen to what I have to say before you reject it completely.
11. Let me pay for the dinner – it’s the least I can do.
12. The least he deserves is a compliment from time to time.
13. Hungary is one of the least polluted of the former East-bloc states.
14. The least confusing route would be to get on the M6 at Birmingham.
15. The new taxes will fall on those least able to pay.
16. This chair squeaks the least.
17. The man who actually won the car is the one who wanted it least.
18. Troubles come when you least expect them.