middlebrow

English

Etymology

middle +‎ brow, by analogy with highbrow and lowbrow. The term first appeared in Punch (1925) and was later used by Virginia Woolf (1930s) in an unsent letter to the New Statesman, published as a chapter in the book The Death of a Moth and Other Essays (1942).

Adjective

middlebrow (not comparable)

1. (derogatory) Neither highbrow or lowbrow, but somewhere in between.
   • 2000 September 21, Hal Foster, “Slumming with Rappers at the Roxy”, in London Review of Books‎^[1], volume 22, number 18, →ISSN:

     What does a Princeton graduate whose old dream it was to write for the New Yorker do when that dream comes true, only to discover that his cherished magazine is no longer the middlebrow arbiter of high culture of his imagining, but just another media outlet frantic for its market share of mass culture?

   • 2017 September 29, “Winnie-the-Pooh brought joy to readers, but misery to the Milnes”, in The Economist‎^[2]:

     As in so many middlebrow period dramas, the vintage cars are too shiny, the clothes too smart, the upper-class accents too strained and the dialogue too contrived. However dark the plot becomes, the sun keeps shining brightly through the trees.

   • 2018 August 26, Jesse Green, “Neil Simon Drew Big Laughs, Then Came a Cultural Shift”, in The New York Times‎^[3]:

     In the late ’60s and early ’70s, as independent films were diversifying their outlook and shaking off the formulas of Hollywood storytelling, Broadway boulevard comedies like “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” and “California Suite” — tales of the befuddled nouveau riche in a new world — began to look mass-produced and middlebrow.

   • 2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC‎^[4]:

     It's for this reason some regard Hanks with a sniffy attitude, seeing his middlebrow Hollywood fare as unfashionable (yes) and reactionary (no).

Usage notes

Generally pejorative, implying pretension and vulgarity – aspiring and appropriating high culture, but not appreciating it. On occasion instead used positively.

Translations

neither highbrow or lowbrow

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 中庸之辈

• German: mittelmäßig (de), mäßig (de)

Noun

middlebrow (plural middlebrows)

1. A person or thing that is neither highbrow nor lowbrow, but in between.

Translations

person or thing neither highbrow or lowbrow

• German: Durchschnittsmensch (de) m

See also

• midcult
• midwit
• no-brow

References

• ESC, 2003. Re:highbrow, middlebrow, lowbrow, The Phrase finder.
• Robert Hendrickson, 1997. Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (New York: Facts on File)

Further reading

• middlebrow on Wikipedia.Wikipedia