1 (the middle) [sing.] the part of sth that is at an equal distance from all its edges or sides; a point or a period of time between the beginning and the end of sth:
a lake with an island in the middle * He was standing in the middle of the room. * The phone rang in the middle of the night. * This chicken isn't cooked in the middle. * His picture was right / bang (= exactly) in the middle of the front page. * I have a pain in the middle of my back. * Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. * I should have finished by the middle of the week. * You can't leave in the middle of the meeting! * I like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. * When they quarrel, I am often caught in the middle.
2 [C,usually sing.] (informal) a person's waist:
He grabbed her around the middle. * I've put on weight around the middle.
IDIOMS
be in the middle of sth / of doing sth to be busy doing sth:
They were in the middle of dinner when I called * I'm in the middle of writing a difficult letter.
the middle of nowhere (informal) a place that is a long way from other buildings, towns, etc:
She lives on a small farm in the middle of nowhere.
split / divide sth down the middle to divide sth into two equal parts:
The country was split down the middle over the strike (= half supported it, half did not).
moreatPIGn.
Part of speech: adjective
[onlybeforenoun] in a position in the middle of an object, group of objects, people, etc. between the beginning and the end of sth:
Pens are kept in the middle drawer. * She's the middle child of three. * He was very successful in his middle forties. * a middle-sized room * the middle-income groups in society
IDIOMS
(steer, take, etc.) a middle course
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for middle is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is middle a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, middle is tagged as noun.
Does middle appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — middle appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
