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Glite Dictionary
⚖️ Average quality 🌾 Coarse wheat mix
middling

middling

1 7.5
Coarse wheat pieces left after milling often used for animal feed
  • noun
  • /ˈmɪd.lɪŋ/
  • Specialized
translation icon : mediocre
  • "Mind you, middling is a damn sight better than business has been for years."
  • wheat middlings

Examples

  • For the most part, inspectors gave the contractor middling grades; however, they questioned whether ITT charged the government for work outside their contract.

    Blog text (34)

  • In the first place, Tocqueville puts the same reliance on the "middling" classes.

    Academic text (1998)

  • 2012 was a fair-to-middling dating year for your girl.

    Blog text (27)

  • Expectations were high, and reaction ran the gamut from disappointing to middling.

    Blog text (5)

  • Oh, there had been a few fair-to-middling days thrown in during that twelve-month period, but for the most part, they had been bad.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • If anyone had asked him before the day she left if theirs was a happy marriage, he would have answered "average" or "middling" or "so-so," not too ecstatic to get tiresome, not so complacent that they always agreed, but just about right.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • The bakery offered a middling selection of bread, with some loaves being better than others.

  • Despite its middling price, the restaurant is known for its consistent quality and service.

  • The chef described his attempts at creating the dish as middling, admitting he could do better.

Antonyms

superior
203 4.2

Better in quality or performance than similar things

inferior
63 3.7

Not as good in quality as something else

Idioms

fair to middling
  • Archaic
1 6.9

Medium quality, neither very good nor very bad

Surface Forms

middling singular
middlings plural

Morphology

middling = middle (semi-transparent) = middle + ing

The form is built from 'middle' + '-ing', but the milling-specific noun sense is specialized and not fully predictable from the parts.

Etymology

Middling (noun) comes from middle + -ing and originally named the bits left 'in the middle' when grain is ground — not fine flour and not rough bran. So a middling is a medium-quality product from milling that farmers can feed to animals or use to add fiber.