middle-brow

comparative more middle-brow · superlative most middle-brow

1. alternativeAlternative form of middlebrow.

   Characteristically, the middle-brow novel was thus written for and by middle-class women, and could be stigmatised, to use Adorno's term, as a middle-class, bourgeois activity.

   1998, Judy Simons, Kate Fullbrook, Writing, a Woman's Business, page 35

   2 more examples

   'Middle-brow' literature — not to beat about the bush — is inferior literature adapted to the special tastes and needs of the middle class and of those who consciously or not adopt the values of that class.

   2016, Arnold Kettle, An Introduction to the English Novel

   David Thorns sets out Suburbia (1973) as a study in which he aims to demonstrate that disdain for the 'middle-brow, conformist, respectable, uninspiring members of society who are quite content to potter around in their own rather limited world' was in fact a view that was 'divorced from the realities of suburban life'.

   2020, Nicola Bishop, Lower-Middle-Class Nation

plural middle-brows

1. alternativecountableuncountableAlternative form of middlebrow.

   The high-brow would like to get rid of the middle-brow, but the middle-brow outnumbers him.

   1949 April 11, “High Brow, Low-Brow, Middle-brow”, in LIFE, page 99

   2 more examples

   The criticism of society which proceeds from this direction is self-undermined, for it is full of the images, the rhythms, the poses, the easy values of the successful midle layer, the middle competence, the middle-brow.

   1988, Isaac Rosenfeld, Mark Shechner, Preserving the Hunger:, page 77

   However, most cultural intermediaries, those in charge of television and radio schedules and newspapers and magazines, are middle-brows, and yet have considerable means at their disposal.

   2012, Simon Stewart, Culture and the Middle Classes