Mediocre

How to spell mediocre

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce mediocre

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mediocre mean?

1. adjectiveOf only moderate or average quality; not particularly good.

Mediocre in a sentence

• The restaurant served a mediocre meal that nobody wanted to repeat.

• Despite the hype, the sequel turned out to be thoroughly mediocre.

Where does mediocre come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English in the late 1500s from the French mediocre, which itself descended from the Latin mediocris, meaning 'of middle degree' or 'moderate'. The Latin term was vividly literal: it joined medius, meaning 'middle', with ocris, an old word for a rugged mountain or stony peak, so the original image was of something only 'halfway up the mountain', neither at the bottom nor the top. Over time that picture of being stuck in the middle softened into the modern sense of merely average or second-rate quality. The French -cre ending is exactly what trips up modern writers, who often expect the English-looking -ker; remembering the French ancestry helps fix the spelling. The same medius root sits inside familiar words like medium, median, and mediate, all carrying the idea of a middle point.

How the word is built

• medi- (from Latin medius: middle)
• -ocre (from ocris: a rugged mountain or peak)