midst

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See also: 'midst

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English middes, midst, myddest (middle), from Old English midde, reshaped in Middle English phrases like in middes (in the middle) by analogy with adverbs in -(e)s; also compare Old English on middan, tōmiddes. Forms in -(e)st are probably due to influence of superlatives.[1]

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /mɪdst/, [mɪdst], [mɪtst]
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪdst

Noun

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midst (plural midsts)

  1. (often literary) A place in the middle of something; may be used of a literal or metaphorical location.
    • 1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Affair at the Novelty Theatre”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:
      Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.
    • 1995, Mary Ellen Pitts, Toward a Dialogue of Understandings: Loren Eiseley and the Critique of Science, page 225:
      At dawn, in the midst of a mist that is both literal and the unformed shifting of thought, he encounters a young fox pup playfully shaking a bone.
    • 2002, Nathan W. Schlueter, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963, speech, quoted in One Dream Or Two?: Justice in America and in the Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., page 89:
      As he said in "I Have a Dream," the Negro "lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

Synonyms

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Translations

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Preposition

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midst

  1. (rare) Among, in the middle of; amidst.
    Mildred comes home from work early only to discover her husband, Robert, midst of a lewd affair with their neighbor, Gladys.

Quotations

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Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ middes, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Anagrams

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