Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of medium size, position, or quality.
  • adjective Mediocre. synonym: average.
  • noun Pork or bacon cut from between the ham and shoulder of a pig.
  • noun Salt pork.
  • noun Any of various products, such as partially refined petroleum or ore, that are intermediate in quality, size, price, or grade.
  • noun Coarsely ground wheat mixed with bran.
  • adverb Fairly; moderately.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Tolerably; moderately.
  • 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.
  • Not in good health, yet not very ill; also, in Scotland, in fairly good health.
  • Of medium quality: a specific commercial grade of flour, pork, etc. See fair to middling, under fair.
  • noun The part of a gun-stock between the grasp and the tail-pipe or ramrod-thimble.
  • noun That part of a hog which lies between the ham and the shoulder; a side of bacon.
  • noun 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.
  • noun plural The coarser particles resulting from milling, intermingled with a certain quantity of bran and foreign matters,used as feed for farm stock; canaille.
  • noun plural The finest kind of wheat bran.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of intermediate or average size, position, or quality; mediocre
  • adjective In fairly good health.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any commodity of intermediate quality or size (especially when coarse particles of ground wheat are mixed with bran)
  • adjective lacking exceptional quality or ability
  • adverb to a moderately sufficient extent or degree

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably Middle English midlin : mid, mid; see mid + -ling, having a quality; see –ling.]

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Examples

  • From domestic uneasiness a man has a thousand resources; in middling life, the tavern, in high life, the gaming-table, suspends the anxiety of thought.

    Letters for Literary Ladies: To Which is Added, An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification 1798

  • Joshua Rothkopf, senior film writer at Time Out New York, hands out a maximum of six stars (which unintentionally enables studios to label his middling recommendations as four-star reviews in ads).

    Let's Rate the Ranking Systems of Film Reviews 2009

  • But just as well, let's have people with military experience; let's have people from all walks of life, people from the top-echelon schools but also people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the pageantry of America ...

    Russert Took Media Bias Seriously Bernard Goldberg 2008

  • Cases, again, which have to do with neither of these, and where the intention is not to get the hearer to do, or to pronounce judgment upon anything, but only to give him pleasure, occupy as it were a middle place between the former two, and are on that account called middling, or moderate.

    On Christian Doctrine, in Four Books Saint Augustine 1887

  • This far, Team Obama has tried to tweak a middling message, at times a day late and a dollar short.

    Thestar.com - Home Page Mitch Potter 2011

  • Among what may be termed the middling classes, I have been very much amused with the compound of vanity and ignorance which I have met with.

    Diary in America, Series Two Frederick Marryat 1820

  • At the same time, American politics avoids the harsh truths of the world's historic transition towards a place with many competitors, other centers of power, and with reduced opportunity for what Benjamin Franklin called the middling people in America.

    Palestine Chronicle - Headlines 2008

  • "It is so wrong to suggest that this is somehow some kind of middling improvement for the American people," he said.

    Aide: Obama believes tax on costly policies 'has some merit' 2009

  • Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar series is kind of middling magic; the talent needed to use a specific magic is pretty rare, but there are so many types of magic 8 to 15 depending on who you ask that a sizable percentage of the population has a talent for something.

    How Many Magicians? marycatelli 2010

  • At any rate, the release of Praire Wind gives me an opportunity to voice how much Neil Young's music has meant to me for a very long time, and, because of that, how much leeway I'm willing to give him when he produces an album that's maybe only "middling" rather than great.

    Music 2007

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  • "CATHLEEN: Is the sea bad by the white rocks, Nora?

    NORA: Middling bad, God help us. There's a great roaring in the west, and it's worse it'll be getting when the tide's turned to the wind."

    - J. M. Synge, 'Riders to the Sea'.

    December 13, 2008