middle ground

See also: middle-ground

English

Alternative forms

• middle-ground

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

middle ground (countable and uncountable, plural middle grounds)

1. (idiomatic) A compromise position between extremes.

   You need to find the middle ground between the two extremes.

   • 2012 June 26, Genevieve Koski, “Music: Reviews: Justin Bieber: Believe”, in The A.V. Club‎^[1], archived from the original on 6 August 2020:

     But musical ancestry aside, the influence to which [Justin] Bieber is most beholden is the current trends in pop music, which means Believe is loaded up with EDM accouterments, seeking a comfortable middle ground where Bieber’s impressively refined pop-R&B croon can rub up on techno blasts and garish dubstep drops (and occasionally grind on some AutoTune, not necessarily because it needs it, but because a certain amount of robo-voice is expected these days).

   • 2022 April 6, Conrad Landin, “ScotRail in the public eye...”, in RAIL, number 954, page 40:

     " [...] I want to work with the unions, I want to listen to their demands. We're not always going to agree, of course, but they want public ownership of the railways to work, and we want public ownership of the railways to work, so actually there's a middle ground here."

   • 2023 May 4, Frank Bruni, “Republicans Are Running Wild in My State”, in The New York Times‎^[2]:

     This is not a land of blowouts. It’s a middle ground, and that’s reflected in voter registration rolls. Nearly 2.6 million North Carolinians declare themselves unaffiliated, while just over 2.4 million identify as Democrats and just under 2.2 million as Republicans. We don’t tilt. We teeter.

2. (art, photography) The middle distance.

Translations

compromise position between extremes

• Dutch: compromis (nl) n, middenweg (nl) m
• Finnish: keskitie, välimaasto
• French: compromis (fr) m, juste milieu (fr), milieu (fr) m
• Persian: موضع میانه (moze'-e miyâne)
• Polish: kompromis (pl), rozwiązanie kompromisowe, płaszczyzna porozumienia
• Portuguese: meio-termo (pt) m
• Swedish: medelväg (sv) c
• Turkish: orta yol (tr)

middle distance

• Finnish: keskiala
• Irish: meánionad m, meánraon m
• Persian: حد وسط (hadd-e vasat)

See also

• golden mean
• compromise

Further reading

• “middle ground”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.