mid
/mɪd/ adjective, noun, adverb, preposition
Forms midmost mids myd
- adjective Occupying a middle position; middle.
- adjective (linguistics) Made with a somewhat elevated position of some certain part of the tongue, in relation to the palate; midway between the high and the low; said of certain vowel sounds, such as, [e o ɛ ɔ].
- adjective (originally African-American Vernacular and Internet slang) Mediocre; of middling quality.
- adjective (Internet slang, by extension) Trashy; low-quality.
- noun (location, online gaming, slang) The middle of the battlefield. “We need to retake mid.”
- adverb (location, online gaming, slang) To or into the middle of the battlefield. “Everyone head mid.”
- preposition (archaic) Amid. “mid the best”
- noun (archaic) Middle.
- noun (disc golf) A mid-range.
- preposition (chiefly in representations of Dutch- or German-accented English) With.
Synonyms
meh pedestrian unexceptional average comme ci comme ça crappy moderate decent indifferent lackluster mediocre middling no great shakes nothing to write home about not worth writing home about OK okayish ordinary uninspiring shitty
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English mid, midde, from Old English midd (“mid, middle, midway”), from Proto-West Germanic *midi, from Proto-Germanic *midjaz (“mid, middle”, adjective), from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“between, in the middle, middle”).
Cognate with Dutch midden (“in the middle”), German Mitte (“center, middle, mean”), Icelandic miður (“middle”, adjective), Latin medius (“middle”, noun and adjective). See also middle. The slang sense may be influenced by terms such as middling and midwit.
From Middle English mid, midde, from Old English midd (“midst, middle”, noun), from Proto-Germanic *midją, *midjǭ, *midjô (“middle, center”) < *midjaz, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“between, in the middle, middle”). Cognate with German Mitte (“center, middle, midst”), Danish midje (“middle”), Icelandic midja (“middle”). See also median, Latin mediānus.
Clipping of mid-range.
From or representing German mit, and/or perhaps German Low German mid. Although Middle English had a native preposition mid with this same meaning ("with"), it had fallen out of general use by the mid 1400s and survived into the modern English period only in sporadic use and the compounds midwife and theremid.
Webster’s 1913
- adjective Denoting the middle part; as, in mid ocean.
- adjective Occupying a middle position; middle; as, the mid finger; the mid hour of night.
- noun Middle. [Obs.]
- preposition See Amid.
Etymology [AS. midd; akin to OS. middi, D. mid (in comp.), OHG. mitti, Icel. mi, Goth. midjis, L. medius, Gr. madhya. Amid, Middle, Midst, Mean, Mediate, Meridian, Mizzen, Moiety.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “mid”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details