Mainstream

How to spell mainstream

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mainstream

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mainstream mean?

1. nounThe dominant or most widely accepted body of opinion, taste, or activity in a society.
2. adjectiveBelonging to or reflecting the conventional, widely accepted ideas or tastes of most people.
3. verbTo place pupils with special needs into ordinary classes, or to bring something into general acceptance.

Mainstream in a sentence

• noun

  The band spent years on the fringe before breaking into the mainstream.

• adjective

  The report was ignored by mainstream newspapers for weeks.

• verb

  The school decided to mainstream children with mild learning difficulties.

• noun

  Once a niche diet, it has now entered the mainstream of everyday cooking.

• adjective

  Electric cars have become a mainstream choice for new buyers.

• verb

  Campaigners worked to mainstream the technology so ordinary households could afford it.

Where does mainstream come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'main' and 'stream', and its literal sense came first: the mainstream was the principal current of a river, the powerful central flow that carried most of the water. The 'main' element traces back to the Old English mægen, meaning 'strength' or 'power', the same ancestor behind 'might', so a mainstream was originally the strongest part of the channel. 'Stream' descends from the Old English stream, a word for flowing water shared widely across the Germanic languages. By the nineteenth century writers were using the term figuratively for the dominant direction of a movement, a culture, or a body of opinion, the broad central flow into which smaller tributaries merge. From there it spread into adjective use, describing whatever is conventional or widely accepted, and later into a verb in education for placing pupils with special needs into ordinary classes. Because it is simply two familiar words pushed together with no silent letters, the only real trap is remembering it is written as one solid word rather than two.

How the word is built

• main (chief, principal, from Old English mægen 'strength')
• stream (a current of water, from Old English stream)