Medium

How to spell medium

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce medium

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does medium mean?

1. adjectiveOf middle size, amount, or degree, between small and large.
2. nounA means or channel by which something is communicated, expressed, or transmitted.
3. nounA person who claims to communicate between the living and the spirits of the dead.

Medium in a sentence

• adjective

  The jacket fit better in a medium size than in the large.

• noun

  Email remains the main medium for company announcements.

• noun

  The show featured a medium who claimed to speak with spirits.

• adjective

  She ordered a medium coffee rather than the small one.

• noun

  Oil paint is her favourite medium for portraits.

• noun

  A self-styled medium held seances in the back room of the shop.

Where does medium come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin medium, the neuter form of the adjective medius, which literally meant 'middle' or 'in the middle'. In Latin the noun medium named a middle point, a midpoint, or something held in common between people, and that core idea of a 'middle' or an 'in-between' runs through every modern sense. English adopted it in the late 1500s, first to mean a middle state or an intervening substance, and then it branched out: the thing through which something is transmitted (a medium of communication), the substance an artist works in, and even a person believed to stand between the living and the dead. The Latin medius is also the parent of everyday words like 'medial', 'median', and 'mediate', and it explains the spelling, since the steady 'medi-' stem keeps its 'i' before the '-um' ending. The plural can be 'media' (the Latin neuter plural) or simply 'mediums', depending on the sense.

How the word is built

• medi- (from Latin medius: middle)
• -um (Latin neuter noun ending)