English Explanatory Dictionary

middlebrow

English dictionary entry

Meanings

adj
  1. Neither highbrow or lowbrow, but somewhere in between.
noun
  1. A person or thing that is neither highbrow nor lowbrow, but in between.

Word forms

middlebrow middle-brow middle brow middlebrows

Etymology

From middle + brow, by analogy with highbrow and lowbrow. The term first appeared in Punch (1925) and was later used by Virginia Woolf (1930s) in an unsent letter to the New Statesman, published as a chapter in the book The Death of a Moth and Other Essays (1942).

Related words

midcult midwit no-brow

Derived words

middlebrowism
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