Meanings
- rareuncountableThe state or quality of being mid.
The curly brackets are necessary because notions such as non-lowness, midness, etc. are not accessible, as such but only implicit in the naming.
2014, Jacques Durand, Generative and Non-Linear Phonology, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 812 more examples
Rule (11) formulates that short, non-high vowels that agree in backness, roundness and midness (/a/: [- mid, - back, - round]; 10/: [+ mid, + back, + round]) are lengthened before voiceless fricatives.
2021 [1985], Beat Glauser, “7: Linguistic Atlases and Generative Phonology”, in Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics, volume 26, Taylor & Francis, page 118After Bauer (1926/70:11) and Cantineau (1960:111), I analyse this mid height as the result of lowering conditioned by postvelars. It is phonetic because the high vowels are gradiently mid, their degree of midness depending on their degree of proximity to the postvelar. This is illustrated by (30a-b) in which, while the first-syllable vowels are [ɛ], the second-syllable vowels are perceptually a short diphthong from mid [ɛ] to high [ɪ].
2003, Kimary N. Shahin, Postvelar Harmony, John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 69
Origin
Synchronically, by surface analysis, mid + -ness; diachronically, known to have an equivalent etymon in Old English and probably never absent from the language since then, albeit rare.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
midness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/midness
“midness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/midness. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “midness,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/midness.
Source: midness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.