midst

• midest, middest, middis, middst, myddest, mydest, myddis, myddst, mydst (all obsolete)

From Middle English middes, midst, myddest (“middle”), from Old English midde, reshaped in Middle English phrases like in middes (“in the middle”) by analogy with adverbs in -(e)s; also compare Old English on middan, tōmiddes. Forms in -(e)st are probably due to influence of superlatives.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /mɪdst/, [mɪdst], [mɪtst]

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• Rhymes: -ɪdst

midst (plural midsts)

1. (often literary) A place in the middle of something; may be used of a literal or metaphorical location.
   • 1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Affair at the Novelty Theatre”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:

     Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.

   • 1995, Mary Ellen Pitts, Toward a Dialogue of Understandings: Loren Eiseley and the Critique of Science, page 225:

     At dawn, in the midst of a mist that is both literal and the unformed shifting of thought, he encounters a young fox pup playfully shaking a bone.

   • 2002, Nathan W. Schlueter, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963, speech, quoted in One Dream Or Two?: Justice in America and in the Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., page 89:

     As he said in "I Have a Dream," the Negro "lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

• centre, center, middle

midst

1. (rare) Among, in the middle of; amidst.

   Mildred comes home from work early only to discover her husband, Robert, midst of a lewd affair with their neighbor, Gladys.

   • 1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC:

     She puts the period often from his place ; And 'midst the sentence so her accent breaks

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:midst.

• amid
• amidst

• in the midst of
• in one's midst

• DTIMs, MSTID, Smidt