middish en · ADJ
Etymology
From mid + -ish. Compare the prefix mid-.
Meanings
-
(informal, not-comparable, used as a prefix) Around the middle part.
I dropped out of high school to smoke cones and play bass guitar, which was pretty great for a decade or so. I got pretty excellent at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1, 2, and 3. Then in my middish-20s I very accidentally fell into a university preparation program at the University of Newcastle.
2015 November 2, Stephen Owen, “In defence of the annoying mature-age student”, in The Guardian:“I can tell you one story—of a kind of middish-level executive at NBC who made an advance that was inappropriate. And I just felt so sorry for him,” Pauley confided with a sheepish smile, without identifying the miscreant.
2017 April 13, Lloyd Grove, “Jane Pauley: I Was Sexually Harassed at NBC”, in The Daily Beast:Chuck Bowden once brought me a beguiling, befuddling manuscript. It was thick, knotty, printed in one of those horrific fonts that the early generations of Mac computers offered back in the middish '80s.
2019, Gregory McNamee, “Of Rock 'n' Roll and Corn Laws: A Few Words on Charles Bowden”, in Bill Broyles, Bruce J. Dinges, editors, America's Most Alarming Writer: Essays on the Life and Work of Charles Bowden, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 122:
-
(not-comparable, of a vowel) Somewhat or approximately mid; somewhere between the high and the low.
The value of the Latin letter O was for a virtual certainty a mid, back, rounded vowel. If therefore this letter is used to render a vowel in a previously unwritten (ancient) language, […] it is to be inferred that the phoneme in question was probably some kind of middish, backish, rounded vowel, or more accurately, included such phones prominently in its allophonic range.
2000, Andrew L. Sihler, Language History: An introduction, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 196–197: