Midsummer

How to spell midsummer

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce midsummer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does midsummer mean?

1. nounThe middle of summer, especially the period around the summer solstice in late June.

Midsummer in a sentence

• The festival is always held in midsummer, when the days are longest.

• By midsummer the garden was overgrown with roses and tall grass.

Where does midsummer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, recorded in Old English as midsumor, formed simply from mid, meaning 'middle', and sumor, the ancestor of the modern 'summer'. Both halves descend from Germanic roots: the mid element is related to Latin medius and Greek mesos, both meaning 'middle', while sumor goes back to a Proto-Germanic word for the warm season shared across the old Germanic languages. From the earliest records it described the period around the summer solstice in late June, and the festivals and folklore attached to that time, such as Midsummer's Eve, kept the word firmly in use. Shakespeare cemented it in the imagination with 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in the 1590s. The only spelling pitfall is remembering it is a single closed-up word, with the double s sitting at the join of mid and summer.

How the word is built

• mid- (middle)
• summer (the warm season, from Old English sumor)