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say it: MID-uhl
middle is a noun, adjective and verb meaning "an area that is approximately central within some larger region". It carries 9 recorded senses.
an area that is approximately central within some larger region
“it is in the center of town”
“they ran forward into the heart of the struggle”
“they were in the eye of the storm”
Canada · United Kingdom
the middle area of the human torso (usually in front)
“young American women believe that a bare midriff is fashionable”
being neither at the beginning nor at the end in a series
“adolescence is an awkward in-between age”
“in a mediate position”
“the middle point on a line”
between an earlier and a later period of time
“in the middle years”
“in his middle thirties”
put in the middle
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for middle come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.