Middle American.
/ˌmɪdl əˈmɛrᵻkə/, U.S. /ˈˌmɪd(ə)l əˈmɛrəkə/ 1. A geographical region comprising Central America, Mexico, and the Antilles.
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the world > the earth > named regions of earth > America > Central and South America > [noun] > Central America
Middle America1841
Mesoamerica1948
1841 Jrnl. Statist. Soc. 3 383 In Middle America the town of Mexico, and in South America the town of Rio Janeiro , are the chief places for literary-mercantile intercourse.
1898 Appletons' Pop. Sci. Monthly Nov. 1 (title) Was Middle America peopled from Asia?
1912 Amer. Econ. Rev. 2 461 This ample study of the products of the soil in middle America, by a late professor at the National University of Cuba.
1933 Amer. Hist. Rev. 38 451 Middle America was occupied from ocean to ocean.
1946 Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 40 1169 A sabbatical leave spent in Colombia and other countries of Middle America.
1970 Man 5 317/2 The widespread tropical forests of Middle America [in the Mesolithic].
1975 Sci. Amer. Oct. 73/2 The most neutral of scholars' terms for this period in Middle America is Last Post-classic; many simply call it ‘the decadent period’.
1995 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 92 1103/1 The..repeat was present in all wild beans tested from the other two geographic regions, Middle America and the southern Andes.
2. The middle part of the United States, esp. the Midwest. Cf. Mid-America n.
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the world > the earth > named regions of earth > America > North America > [noun] > United States > western states > mid-west
Mid-America1861
Middle West1866
Midwest1894
Middle America1924
1924 Mississippi Valley Hist. Rev. 11 267 Dorothy Dondore, in speaking of the ‘Points of Contact between History and Literature in the Mississippi Valley’, had to do with the treatment of the literature..of middle America from the earliest exploration to the present.
1926 D. Dondore (title) The prairie and the making of middle America: four centuries of description.
1949 Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 43 1167 Later in 1898, young Beard went to England... The young man hardly forgot what he had learned back home in restless middle America [sc. in Indiana and Chicago].
1977 Ecology 58 581/1 The relative species richness of Zingiberales families in Middle America is well correlated with their number of associated rolled leaf Hispinae.
1989 J. Honey Does Accent Matter? iv. 66 The specific genre known as ‘country’ music is said to have helped since 1945 to spread the ‘Sunbelt’ accent from the Appalachian Mountains into areas all over Middle America.
1996 Jrnl. Blacks Higher Educ. No. 12. 79/1 Woodward of the University of Kansas Press has also had a hard time selling Lawrence, Kansas, to prospective editors: ‘We have a shortage of qualified minority applicants willing to locate to middle America.’
3. The middle class in the United States, esp. in the suburban Midwest, as characterized by traditional social attitudes and moderately conservative politics.
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the world > people > nations > native or inhabitant of America > native or inhabitant of North America > native or inhabitant of U.S.A. > [noun] > collectively > specific
Middle America1968
1968 Sunday Times 29 Sept. 8 What is seriously wrong with Mr Nixon's new Middle America is that it is virtually all white.
1972 P. Dickinson Lizard in Cup x. 159 We've got to show that we can build, but..Middle America will like that even less than the bombs.
1989 A. Bernays Professor Romeo vi. 81 ‘Little pockets of lily-white middle America,’ Barker said.
1994 Summit Bank Third Quarter 8/2 My best bet: Middle America, the state of mind, not necessarily the place on the map.
1998 Newsweek 4 May 42/2 Pressure on the dollar may force up U.S. interest rates, and middle America's mortgage and car-loan rates could rise.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2002; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1841