Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who is somewhat cultured, with conventional tastes and interests; one who is neither highbrow nor lowbrow.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective pejorative Neither
highbrow orlowbrow , but somewhere in between. - noun A person or thing that is neither a highbrow or lowbrow, but in between.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun someone who is neither a highbrow nor a lowbrow
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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(By the term middlebrow, one seeks to describe a writer who, while disdaining the shoddy and the ephemeral, has built up a following among intelligent readers whose notions he takes care not to challenge or disturb.)
England, Whose England? Mantel, Hilary 1989
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The painting, a favorite of editorial cartoonists, he calls "middlebrow."
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Mallika Rao 2012
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The painting, a favorite of editorial cartoonists, he calls "middlebrow."
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Mallika Rao 2012
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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word middlebrow first appeared in print in 1925, in
verbatim 2008
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Call the Ozarks "middle America" if you have to, but don't call it middlebrow.
Art in the Ozarks Holly Finn 2011
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Shot in a curiously steady fashion, skewing towards so-called middlebrow realism, this was a completely outrageous work in many other respects.
Frightfest Days 2 & 3: The Horseman, Landis, Trick ‘R Treat, Giallo, Hierro and More | /Film 2009
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Writers who would once have been called middlebrow are now assigned, depending solely on their degree of verbal affectation, to either the literary or the genre camp.
Archive 2009-09-01 2009
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Writers who would once have been called middlebrow are now assigned, depending solely on their degree of verbal affectation, to either the literary or the genre camp.
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A "middlebrow" program "is really hard to pull off in this age," says industry analyst Andrew Tyndall.
Television: Howard Kurtz on timing of Larry King's retirement, successor 2010
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It's exactly the kind of middlebrow entertainment that attracts people who no longer go to movies - because it seems like the kind of movie they no longer make.
whichbe commented on the word middlebrow
This must be what political pundits mean when they use the word centrist.
December 11, 2008