medio

Forms

medio (feminine media, masculine plural medios, feminine plural medias)^[1] Old Spanish meyo and meo (feminine mea), the inherited forms, occur in Aragonese and Leonese texts beside medio.^[2][3] The compound mediodía had the forms meydía in Berceo, meyodía in western Asturian and meodía and megodía in Santander.^[2]

Etymology

It continues inherited from Latin medius (“middle, half”), with a learned influence of the Latin form on the Spanish one.^[2][4][5] Regular development would have given meyo and then meo, and both are recorded: the first in the Vidal Mayor and in inventories from Aragon, the second above all in Leonese and Aragonese texts, and the first is still said in Upper Aragon.^[2][6] Corominas does not believe that so important a word was a learned borrowing from books: at the stage with /j/ it was changed to the present form by speakers who imitated Latin, a refined pronunciation that Enrique de Villena mocks, and the change may have been welcome because the later form sounded like a form of mear “to urinate”.^[2][7] Wiktionary treats it as borrowed directly from Latin for the same reason.^[1]

Portuguese meio shows the regular development, and the word is also Catalan mig, Italian mezzo and Sardinian mesu.^[2][1][8] The Latin adjective goes back to *meðjos and *médʰyos; its cognates include Ancient Greek μέσος (mésos) and Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌳𐌾𐌹𐍃 (midjis).^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140).^[2][4] In the Cid it is a masculine noun “half”, at verse 751.^[10] In Alfonso X's Lapidario the adjective means “half”: peso de media dragma “the weight of half a drachm”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija gives Latin medius for it, and Covarrubias in 1611 has both “the middle” and “half of a thing”, as in medio real “half a real”, with phrases such as entrar de por medio “to step in as peacemaker”.^[12][13] The Diccionario de Autoridades has the noun for the middle point, for a way taken in a business, and for an action suited to reaching an end, the sense of today's medios “means”.^[14] The Academy's 1884 edition adds “a liquid or gas in which animals live”, the source of “environment”.^[15] Leonese and Latin American speech make the adverb agree like an adjective (media desnuda “half naked”), a use Corominas finds in Galician as early as the 14th century and Kany in all of South America.^[2][16] The sense “spiritual medium” is a calque of Latin medium.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid, as a noun “half”.^[2][10]
• 1250–1279 – media dragma “half a drachm” in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[11]
• 1331 – the inherited form meyo in an Aragonese inventory.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it with Latin medius.^[12]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives “middle” and “half”.^[13]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the sense “means to an end”.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the sense “environment”.^[15]

Meanings

Adjective

1. half: equal to half of something: Compró medio kilo de tomates.^[5][1]
2. middle: lying between two extremes or in the centre.^[5][1]
3. Intermediate in place or time.^[5]
4. average: having the most general features of a group, people or period: el ciudadano medio.^[5][1]
5. (hyperbolic) A great part of: Medio pueblo salió a recibirlos.^[5][17]
6. (phonetics) Of a vowel: mid, articulated with an opening between close and open.^[5][1]
7. (grammar) Of a verb or clause: middle, expressing a change or process without the subject's active part.^[5][1]
8. (rhetoric) Of style: ornate and elegant but not sublime.^[5][1]

Adverb

1. Half, not entirely: Estaba medio dormido cuando sonó el teléfono.^[17][1]

Noun

1. (sports) A midfielder or half-back.^[5]
2. The middle, the part equally distant from the ends.^[5]
3. A means; a thing that serves a purpose: No tenía medios para pagar el viaje..^[5]
4. A spiritual medium.^[5][1]
5. A course taken in a business or affair.^[5]
6. An action suited to obtaining something.^[5]
7. (mathematics) A half.^[1][17]
8. (historical) A half-real coin in some American countries; a dry measure of half a celemín.^[1]

Word family

• media
• medial
• mediano
• medianoche
• mediodía
• mediacaña
• medioambiente

Related words

• mediar
• mediocridad
• mitad
• promedio
• mediocre
• intermedio
• Latin medius
• Portuguese meio

Usage notes

As an adjective medio stands before the noun and agrees with it (media hora); as an adverb it is unstressed and invariable in standard use (medio loca), though agreement of the adverb is widespread in the Americas.^[17][2] Término medio and justo medio are set phrases for the average and the happy mean.^[15][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 11
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. medio
4. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. medio
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. medio
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. medius
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. medio
8. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 5, 663
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 345
11. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. medio
12. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 378
13. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1125
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 527
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 690
16. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. medio
17. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. medio