medium
- 1Of a size, degree, or amount that falls between high and low extremes.
He prefers a medium roast, somewhere between mild and dark.
Keep the burner at a medium heat so the sauce doesn't scorch.
UsageCommon with words for heat, roast, speed, or height: medium heat, a medium roast, medium height.
Similarmoderate, intermediate, average
- 2A format through which information is communicated or presented to an audience.
Print remains a respected medium for long-form journalism.
New digital media have changed how stories reach younger audiences.
UsageThe plural is usually media: digital media, news media. Mediums also occurs.
Similarformat, channel, vehicle
Note
Calling something a medium can imply that it merely carries content formed elsewhere, which is why Homi Bhabha, in a 1998 interview, objects to treating writing as "a communicational medium."
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The quoted phrase is exactly a communicational medium. publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de
- 3A means, channel, or go-between through which communication or commerce is carried on, or by which an aim is achieved.
The internet has become the primary medium for global commerce.
Protest art served as her medium for challenging the government.
UsageOften a medium for something, or a medium between two people or groups.
Similarmeans, channel, vehicle, instrument, avenue
Note
Here the medium is often a person. Reuben Gold Thwaites, in Early Western Travels, describes a man jealous of "his own importance as a medium between the Ohio Indians and the English." The same idea of a go-between, carried into the séance room, gives the spiritualist's medium.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Thwaites's Early Western Travels contains the quoted description of a man concerned about his importance as an intermediary between the Ohio Indians and the English. upload.wikimedia.org
- The spiritualist sense likewise involves a person acting as an intermediary. en.wikipedia.org
- 4A means of artistic expression, such as a material like oil, pastel, or clay, or a method or style.
Watercolor is a demanding medium that allows little correction.
She moved between several media before settling on sculpture.
UsageArtists work in a medium: in watercolor, in charcoal. The plural is media or mediums.
Note
The Report of the Public Schools of the State of Missouri (1898) keeps students "in the medium of charcoal, pen and ink or pencil," and John P. Sedgwick (1966) calls the woodcut "the favorite graphic medium of Expressionism." The sense reaches past materials to styles, even jazz.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- John P. Sedgwick wrote the cited discussion of modern art. books.google.com
- 5A substance or space in which something exists or through which signals, waves, or forces travel, such as air, water, or a solvent.
Sound waves cannot travel without a medium such as air or water.
Different media slow light by different amounts.
UsageWaves travel through a medium. In science the plural is most often media.
Note
Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum, published in 1626, already uses this sense, asking whether other liquors, "being made Mediums," carry sound differently from water. His plural is mediums. John Denham's The Sophy (1642) uses the same plural for people who stand between rivals: "remove all Mediums." That use is closer to the go-between sense than to sound and waves, and it shows how near the two ideas once sat.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- Francis Bacon wrote Sylva Sylvarum. crrs.library.utoronto.ca
- Under the specified title-page rule, use 1626. The earliest letterpress title page is dated 1626; an additional engraved title page is dated 1627. celm.folger.edu
- Bacon uses the sound-transmitting sense, asks about other liquids, and writes the plural Mediums. en.wiktionary.org
- John Denham wrote The Sophy, first printed in 1642. The suggested 1641 date concerns its first performance. emed.folger.edu
- The Sophy contains the quotation remove all Mediums. en.wiktionary.org
- 6Any substance, structure, or setting that sustains organisms or allows them to grow or be cultured.
Gardeners often add sand to improve the growing medium.
The lab grew the bacteria on a jelly-like medium in shallow dishes.
UsageCommon in growing medium and culture medium. Cells grow in or on a medium.
Similarenvironment, habitat
Note
Biology and horticulture stretch the idea from the flask to the world. A gardener's growing medium may be soil with sand added. For Bashford Dean in Fishes, Living and Fossil (1895), water is "the living medium of fishes," whose density balances them so they move freely in all planes. It includes nutrients prepared in a lab for growing cells, but the medium need not be prepared at all; it can simply be where an organism lives.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- A gardener's growing medium can contain soil and added sand. yardandgarden.extension.iastate.edu
- Bashford Dean wrote Fishes, Living and Fossil, first published in 1895. upload.wikimedia.org
- Dean calls water 'the living medium of fishes' and describes its density as balancing fishes, allowing movement in all planes. upload.wikimedia.org
- Laboratory cell culture media contain nutrients for growing cells. atcc.org
- A medium can be an organism's natural surroundings rather than a prepared culture material. upload.wikimedia.org
Less common meanings
- 7Of meat, cooked beyond medium-rare but short of medium-well, typically leaving the center warm and pink.
She ordered the steak medium, just pink at the center.
A medium steak shows a band of pink when you slice into it.
UsageOften used after the verb or noun as well as before a noun: order a steak medium, a medium steak.
- 8The middle size in a range of sizes, especially of clothing; a garment of that size, or a person who wears it.
The shirts are stocked in medium and large only.
Medium fits most adults comfortably.
UsageUse in medium for the size. For garments, say a medium or two mediums; for a wearer, she's a medium.
Note
Clothing labels shorten it to M. As the name of a size it is uncountable: shirts are stocked in medium and large. The same word becomes countable for the item itself (two mediums) and for the wearer (she's usually a medium), and it turns adjective in a medium drink. Brands disagree about what counts as medium, which is why one brand "runs small."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- Clothing sizes vary between brands. en.wikipedia.org
- 9A person who supposedly conveys information from the spirit world to the living.
The grieving widow visited a medium hoping to reach her husband.
Several mediums gathered for the séance in the parlor.
UsageUse mediums for more than one person: several mediums.
Similarpsychic, clairvoyant, spiritualist
Note
In The Land of Mist (1926), Arthur Conan Doyle's medium bends her head in a dim hall "as if her ears were straining," which is the listening posture the word implies.
- 10A middle position, degree, or rank between two extremes.
The coach struck a happy medium between hard practice and plenty of rest.
After hours of talks, the two sides finally reached a happy medium on pay.
UsageMostly in a happy medium, often with between, after verbs like find, strike or reach.
Similarbalance, compromise, mean, middle
Oppositeextreme
Note
The idiom a happy medium keeps this sense in everyday use. Roger L'Estrange's "Just Medium" lies betwixt pride and abjection (1692), and Jane Austen in Emma praises a size that is "a most becoming medium, between fat and thin." Dickens's young housekeepers "never could hit any medium" in roasting, and hitting or finding one is the natural verb.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Roger L'Estrange's reflection on 'An Oak and a Willow' places the 'Just Medium' between pride and abjection. en.wikisource.org
- L'Estrange's Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists was first published in 1692. en.wikisource.org
- Jane Austen's Emma contains the quoted description of Jane Fairfax's size; it appears in narration reflecting Emma's assessment. gutenberg.org
- In Dickens's David Copperfield, David narrates that he and Dora could not find a medium in roasting meat. gutenberg.org
- 11To a middle degree; neither very much nor very little.
I always have my bagel toasted medium, so it's crisp but not too dark.
I ordered the curry medium spicy so my kids could eat it too.
UsageOften used after a verb like toast or cook, or before an adjective or participle: medium spicy, medium rare.
Similarmoderately
- 12A liquid base that carries the pigment in paint.
Oil painters thin their pigment with a glossy medium.
The choice of medium affects how quickly the paint dries.
Similarvehicle
Note
Painters use the word for the liquid that holds the color, as opposed to the color itself, and it takes both plurals, mediums and media. Keep it apart from the artist's chosen material. An oil painter can say that oil is her medium and, in the same breath, that she thins her paint with a medium: two different senses in one sentence.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- The paint medium binds the pigment, which supplies the colour. nationalgallery.org.uk
- An oil painter can thin paint with a painting medium. gamblincolors.com
- 13An average; sometimes specifically the mathematical mean of a set of values.
The number of Britiſh ſhips annually arriving in our ports vvas reduced to 1756 ſail, containing 92.559 tons, on a medium of the ſix years vvar, compared vvith the ſix years of peace preceding it.
1769, [Edmund Burke], Observations on a Late State of the NationNote
Edmund Burke could still quote, in 1769, a rival's figures for shipping tonnage "on a medium of the six years war," meaning an average taken over a period. The usage is dated now, and average or mean does the job in current prose. Its adjective partner, the obsolete "average" adjective, has fallen out of use entirely.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- The passage appeared in Burke's work in 1769. writersinspire.podcasts.ox.ac.uk
- Burke was quoting another writer, whose argument he then disputed. gutenberg.org
- The quoted phrase concerns shipping tonnage. gutenberg.org
- Medium here means an average calculated over a period. gutenberg.org
- 14Half a pint of Guinness, with the term also used for other stouts in some regions.
Note
Irish drinkers once ordered their stout this way, and the word is now dated as well as informal. With no brand named, it means Guinness, though in some regions it can mean another stout.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Irish drinkers historically used medium for a serving of stout, including a half-pint. irishtimes.com
- 15Equal to the arithmetic average of a set of values.
Note
Writers once used the adjective arithmetically: a medium yield, a medium temperature. Mean and average now fill that slot, and a modern reader would hear a medium temperature through the everyday "intermediate" adjective, as moderate rather than calculated.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Medium historically functioned as an adjective meaning arithmetically average, including in descriptions of temperature. urban-climate.org
- 16The material, such as ceramic pieces, that a mass finishing or abrasive blasting process uses to finish a workpiece's surface.
- 17The term in a syllogism that appears in both premises and connects the two extremes; the middle or mean term.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Latin medium, the neuter form of medius ("middle"), which goes back through Proto-Italic to a Proto-Indo-European root *médʰyos ("between"). It is related to the English word middle.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- English medium was borrowed from Latin medium, the neuter form of medius, meaning “middle.” en.wiktionary.org
- Latin medius descends through Proto-Italic from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos, glossed “between.” en.wiktionary.org
- Medium is etymologically related to English middle. en.wiktionary.org