middling
/ˈmɪdlɪŋ/ (bre, ipa) · /ˈmɪdlɪŋ/ (ame, ipa) · /ˈmid-liŋ -lən/ (ame, mw)
middling — adjective
- middlingpositive
- more middlingcomparative
- most middlingsuperlative
1. in the middle area between good and bad, or between large and small — fine but w
in the middle area between good and bad, or between large and small — fine but with nothing that makes it stand out.
Joon's restaurant got a middling review in the local newspaper last weekend.
predicative-style attributive use with evaluation nouns (review, score)
Sales for the new phone were middling, neither a hit nor a clear failure.
predicative use after linking verb 'were'
Shirin is a middling tennis player who beats beginners but loses to club regulars.
The bakery turned out middling cakes that nobody complained about but nobody praised either.
After a middling start, the football team finally won three games in a row.
- excellent
clearly above average
- outstanding
clearly above average
- terrible
clearly below average
用法筆記
Slightly negative in tone — calling something 'middling' suggests disappointment that it is not better, even though it is not actually bad. Common before evaluation nouns (review, score, performance, results).
常見錯誤
middling — noun
1. (usually middlings) a batch of goods such as cotton, tobacco, or coal that is so
(usually middlings) a batch of goods such as cotton, tobacco, or coal that is sorted into the middle quality grade — better than the lowest grade but not the best.
Cotton broker Yael sold the top grade in London and shipped the middlings to Cairo.
plural form; trade / commodity context
Southern buyers paid less because most of the harvest was middlings, not top grade.
contrast with 'top grade' shows the middle position
Mining records from 1890 priced coal middlings at half the rate of top lumps.
Lakshmi explained that tobacco middlings come from the centre leaves of the plant.
- medium grade
modern industry term for the same idea
- second grade
narrower; specifically the rank below the top
- top grade
the best-sorted batch
用法筆記
Almost always plural and usually paired with the name of the commodity (cotton middlings, tobacco middlings, coal middlings). Found mainly in 19th- and early 20th-century trade records and modern commodity-grading documents — rarely heard in everyday speech.
2. (usually middlings) the small grainy pieces of wheat left after the white flour
(usually middlings) the small grainy pieces of wheat left after the white flour has been sifted out — often fed to farm animals or used in coarse bread.
Eshe bought a sack of wheat middlings from the mill to feed her hens.
typical use: as animal feed
The miller separated the white flour from the middlings using a fine sieve.
process context shows what middlings are
Old farm books in Vermont recommend mixing middlings with corn for winter pig feed.
Renata's grandmother baked dark country bread using middlings instead of plain white flour.
- wheat middlings
the full common form
- millfeed
modern animal-feed industry term
- shorts
overlapping older term for the same milling fraction
- white flour
the fine, sifted product
- bran
the outer husk separated off
用法筆記
Always plural. Distinct from sense 1 (general commodity grade): here the word names a specific physical product of grain milling — the grainy stuff between fine flour and the outer bran. Common in agriculture and baking texts.