middling

Pluralmiddlings

1. 1
   adjective

   Of average or intermediate size, position, or quality; neither clearly good nor clearly bad.

   Critics gave the film middling reviews, praising the acting but faulting the plot.

   Her tennis ranking remained middling for years, neither rising nor falling.

   Similarmediocre, average, so-so, ordinary, unremarkable

   Note

   The adjective came from the noun, which is probably middle plus -ing, and the adverbs grew from the adjective in turn. Its natural place is before a noun of role or rank: a middling poet, a middling orator, a middling author, in an 1853 piece in Littell's Living Age that sets all three against genius. It grades like any ordinary adjective: more middling, most middling.

2. 2
   adverbdialectalBritish

   To a moderate degree; fairly or somewhat.

   The morning was middling cold, enough for a jacket but no more.

   She found the lecture middling interesting and slipped out early.

   Similarmoderately, fairly, somewhat, reasonably, rather

   Note

   Placed directly before an adjective, it tones that adjective down, as in a middling good country or a middling sized plate. The second phrase is easy to misread as the adjective, but middling is modifying sized, not plate. Like the health meaning, it belongs to colloquial regional British speech, so fairly or moderately is the safer choice in formal writing.

3. 3
   adverbdialectalBritish

   Not too badly; with modest or fair success.

   The little bakery was doing middling, steady enough to keep its doors open.

   Crops came in middling that year, enough to see the family through.

   Similardecently, okay, passably, adequately

   Note

   Where the degree adverb modifies an adjective, this one follows a verb and reports how something went: a business doing middling, crops coming in middling. It answers "how are things going?" much as the health meaning answers "how are you?", and it shares that meaning's colloquial, regional British register.

4. 4
   adjectivedialectalBritish

   In fairly good health; not seriously unwell, though not fully recovered either.

   When the doctor asked, he said he'd been middling of late.

   Her mother had been middling all winter, never quite ill but never quite right.

   Similarso-so, okay, fair

   Note

   Regional British speech uses it for health that is neither good nor bad, usually as a reply to a question. In D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913), a man asked about his chest smiles and says "it's very middlin'," and the dropped g carries the voice. Jonathan Swift put it the same way in 1728: "a middling Way, between Healthy and Sick." It is colloquial, so in writing it reads as dialogue.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   Anything that sits in the middle range, whether in size, position, or quality.

   The grader divided the catch into prime fish, middlings, and scraps.

   Each middling fetched less than the best stock but more than the seconds.

   Note

   As a count noun it names the middle group in a ranking, and it is mostly met in the plural. Annachiara Longoni (2014) sorts organizations into Leaders and Middlings. Her Middlings take up some practices but have not managed to put innovative programs into effect. The capital letter there marks the word as a category label rather than a plain description.

6. 6
   noununcountableplural

   With the, people of moderate means considered as a group; the middle class.

   New taxes that year fell hardest on the middling, caught between rich and poor.

   The middling formed the backbone of the town's trade and crafts.

   Similarbourgeoisie

   Note

   This collective use is built like the poor and the rich: the article plus middling stands for a whole class of people and takes a plural verb. Ed White (2014), writing on the Shays Rebellion, pairs it exactly that way, describing a war "financed by the poor and the middling." Although the meaning is plural, the word takes no -s in this construction. Middlings is the plural of the thing-noun.

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