Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A dunghill or refuse heap.
- n. Archaeology A mound or deposit containing shells, animal bones, and other refuse that indicates the site of a human settlement. Also called kitchen midden.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A dunghill; a muck-heap; a receptacle for kitchen refuse, ashes, etc. See midding. [Prov. Eng. and Scotch.] Specifically
- n. A prehistoric muck-heap; a kitchenmidden.
Wiktionary
- n. A dungheap.
- n. A refuse heap usually near a dwelling.
- n. archaeology prehistoric pile of bones and shells.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Prov. Eng. A dunghill.
- n. An accumulation of refuse about a dwelling place; especially, an accumulation of shells or of cinders, bones, and other refuse on the supposed site of the dwelling places of prehistoric tribes, -- as on the shores of the Baltic Sea and in many other places. See Kitchen middens.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (archeology) a mound of domestic refuse containing shells and animal bones marking the site of a prehistoric settlement
- n. a heap of dung or refuse
Etymologies
- From early Scandinavian (early Danish mög-dynge, Norwegian mødding) through Middle English myddyng: muck + dung. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English midding, of Scandinavian origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Molecular analysis of a 11,700 year-old rodent midden from the Atacama Desert, Chile.”
“And they're basing it on comparison with things like modern octopuses, which are known to create what are known as midden piles, but there's a bit of an extrapolation.”
“Imagine a kitchen-midden, that is to say the detritus of ordinary living in different ages, accumulated along the side of some ancient water course, having for its dimensions miles in length, extending hundreds of yards back from the margin of this creek, of tens and tens of thousands of years ago, and having a depth of often many feet along this water course.”
“The midden is the site of the restored Mansion at Tuckahoe in the Indian RiverSide Park.”
“What you need to learn to look for is what's called a midden heap, which [are] the remains of the octopus's meals.”
“And her flighty grown-up daughter, Jenny, stalks out of what she terms a "midden" to seek a better life.”
“Packrats in Utah's Great Basin built and live in this "midden" beneath a juniper tree, their major if slightly toxic food source.”
“Het is totale waanzin om een 13 jarig meisje de wereld rond te laten varen in het deense bootje van 8 meter. golven van 14 meter zijn zaken die aan de orde komen midden op zee.”
Global Voices in English » Netherlands: Too young to sail the world alone at 13?
“Our ancestors used to toss their garbage on the village midden.”
“It was cemented into a pack rat midden with years of detritus and excrement.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘midden’.
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LIT - Ulysses - key words and phrases
money cowrie, bedraggle, omphalos, ineluctable, postprandial, bladderwrack, modality barnacle..., loofah, shipworm, cither, embattle, Malachi and 503 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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Collected Words - List 2
I've been saving these words FOR YEARS. Now, I've found Wordie
gasconade, zaccheus, spoor, precentor, bombazine, otiose, khamsin, bruited, viva voce, whilom, lenitive, ebullition and 244 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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miserable circumstances
describing living arrangements from the less-than-stellar, to the sordid
burrow, garret, ghetto, hovel, hut, lean-to, cavern, shack, shanty, shed, slum, tenement and 59 more...
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Archaeology
Words for shovelbums!
trowel, mattock, chopper, n-transform, c-transform, taphonomy, processual, post-processual, microarchaeology, site, horizon, battleship curve and 33 more...
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Words That Mean Things
I found most of these words in books! That means they MUST be good.
flinders, periplus, palaver, midden, cadge, legerdemain, flense, lapidary, geas, bailey, susurration, satoris and 128 more...
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Verecund, flivver, etc
Just some words I happen to enjoy. Some thread-worn, some not.
yegg, yob, verecund, amatory, fermata, threepenny, gruntled, flivver, gamboge, decolletage, ordure, nudnik and 175 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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Logodaedalus' Lexical Locutionary
Discombobulating the illiterate since the middle of the last century.
adiaphora, agitprop, alliteration, apophthegm, autarky, bête noire, bezoar, biorhythm, braggadocio, canaille, confabulate, confrère and 339 more...
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wunderkammer's Words
smarmy, bubkes, elucidate, togs, aeolian, carp, kibosh, bosky, ramshackle, mange, harpy, effervesce and 163 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, M
metamerism, malady, margin, marauder, maverick, mercury, mirth, mandible, macerate, meteor, manumission, mica and 292 more...
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fredriqua's list
swidden
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traipsin' 'long through dis 'ear book...
Words which are either entirely new to me or;
Words which I comprehend generally but would prefer a more precise definition.
venality, seigneurial, mendicant, perforce, manse, glebe, trenchant, saw, obstreperous, profligate, dissipation, galliard and 176 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for midden.
john “In the Cape Cod town of Wellfleet, Mass., the ancient rite of shellfish gathering (witness the antiquated shell middens found on coasts across the globe) is open to anyone who can plunk down $75 for a seasonal non-residential shell license.”
The New York Times, Shell Shock | Oystering on Cape Cod, by Andy Gensler, August 17, 2010 Aug 17, 2010
yarb Citation on keek (in the Scots sense of 'rubbish bin'). Jan 18, 2009
bilby Discardation? Is that like, uhh, rejectment? Nov 7, 2008
thegretstar In archaeology the contents of a midden are specific to the area. Coastal middens will have mainly shells with sea mammal and fish bones, where as a midden at a site in the desert will likely consist of very different materials, whatever is available for human consumption and discardation.
We usually refer to them as "pre-historic garbage heaps" Jun 18, 2008
ofravens Now our whole task's to hack
some angel-shape worth wearing
from his crabbed midden where all's wrought so awry.
from "Firesong," Sylvia Plath Apr 14, 2008
bilby Stuck in my mind when I read it ... mental picture of Scotsman creating huge pile of garbage in the back yard! Dec 2, 2007
sonofgroucho Thank you, bilby. My wife has read a lot of Alasdair Gray, including 'Lanark'. Dec 2, 2007
bilby This is set in Glasgow:
"Thaw lit the fire, folded back the carpet, swept the floor, carried boxes of rubbish down to the midden, shook mats out of the window and washed the panes." - 'Lanark', Alasdair Gray. Dec 2, 2007
sonofgroucho Some Scots use midden as a synonym for a rubbish bin. Dec 2, 2007
sabdawala रछान Jun 29, 2007