middling

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Of medium size, position, or quality.
2. adj. Mediocre. See Synonyms at average.
3. n. Chiefly Southern U.S. Pork or bacon cut from between the ham and shoulder of a pig. Often used in the plural.
4. n. Chiefly Southern U.S. Salt pork. Also called middling meat.
5. n. Any of various products, such as partially refined petroleum or ore, that are intermediate in quality, size, price, or grade.
6. n. Coarsely ground wheat mixed with bran.
7. adv. Informal Fairly; moderately: "a middling nice cake” ( Hatfield MA Valley Advocate).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Medium in rank, condition, or degree; intermediate; hence, only medium; neither good nor bad; neither one thing nor the other: as, a fruit of middling quality.
2. Not in good health, yet not very ill; also, in Scotland, in fairly good health.
3. Of medium quality: a specific commercial grade of flour, pork, etc. See fair to middling, under fair.
4. n. The part of a gun-stock between the grasp and the tail-pipe or ramrod-thimble.
5. n. That part of a hog which lies between the ham and the shoulder; a side of bacon.
6. n. plural In milling, the parts of a kernel of grain next the skin of the berry, largely composed of gluten and considered the most nutritious part. In the older methods of milling this was ground as fine as possible together with the starchy part and the bran, and then the whole was bolted to separate the bran. By the newer high-milling methods, the middlings are passed through a purifying machine and reground, forming a very pure flour, with larger and more uniform granules than that from the first grinding.
7. n. plural The coarser particles resulting from milling, intermingled with a certain quantity of bran and foreign matters,used as feed for farm stock; canaille.
8. Tolerably; moderately.
9. n. plural The finest kind of wheat bran.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Of intermediate or average size, position, or quality; mediocre
2. adj. In fairly good health.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Of middle rank, state, size, or quality; about equally distant from the extremes; medium; moderate; mediocre; ordinary.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. any commodity of intermediate quality or size (especially when coarse particles of ground wheat are mixed with bran)
2. adj. lacking exceptional quality or ability
3. adv. to a moderately sufficient extent or degree