middish

English

Etymology

From mid +‎ -ish. Compare the prefix mid-.

Adjective

middish (not comparable)

1. (informal, chiefly used as a prefix) Around the middle part.
   • 2015 November 2, Stephen Owen, “In defence of the annoying mature-age student”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     I dropped out of high school to smoke cones and play bass guitar, which was pretty great for a decade or so. I got pretty excellent at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1, 2, and 3. Then in my middish-20s I very accidentally fell into a university preparation program at the University of Newcastle.

   • 2017 April 13, Lloyd Grove, “Jane Pauley: I Was Sexually Harassed at NBC”, in The Daily Beast‎^[2]:

     “I can tell you one story—of a kind of middish-level executive at NBC who made an advance that was inappropriate. And I just felt so sorry for him,” Pauley confided with a sheepish smile, without identifying the miscreant.

   • 2019, Gregory McNamee, “Of Rock 'n' Roll and Corn Laws: A Few Words on Charles Bowden”, in Bill Broyles, Bruce J. Dinges, editors, America's Most Alarming Writer: Essays on the Life and Work of Charles Bowden, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 122:

     Chuck Bowden once brought me a beguiling, befuddling manuscript. It was thick, knotty, printed in one of those horrific fonts that the early generations of Mac computers offered back in the middish '80s.

2. (linguistics, of a vowel) Somewhat or approximately mid; somewhere between the high and the low.
   • 2000, Andrew L. Sihler, Language History: An introduction, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 196–197:

     The value of the Latin letter O was for a virtual certainty a mid, back, rounded vowel. If therefore this letter is used to render a vowel in a previously unwritten (ancient) language, […] it is to be inferred that the phoneme in question was probably some kind of middish, backish, rounded vowel, or more accurately, included such phones prominently in its allophonic range.