middle distancen.adj.

1778 T. West Guide to Lakes 30 Here Ingleborough, behind a variety of lesser mountains, makes the back-ground of the prospect; on each hand of the middle distance, rise two sloping hills.

1792 W. Gilpin Three Ess. 29 Most commonly the scene, or leading-subject of the picture, occupies the middle distance.

1803 J. Farington Diary 3 May (1923) II. xxvii. 95 Turner finishes his distances & middle distances upon a scale that requires universal precission throughout his pictures.

1813 Examiner 10 May 299/2 His..greyish green middle-distance, blue horizon, and grey sky, constitute a rich system of colour.

a1847 R. B. Peake Chain of Gold (1885) i. i. 3 In the middle distance, a Convent embowered with trees. The Jura mountains beyond.

1858 N. Hawthorne Jrnl. 21 June in French & Ital. Notebks. (1980) v. 331 Its great Duomo was seen in the middle distance.

1877 W. S. Gilbert Sorcerer i, in Orig. Plays (1902–11) II. 244 May fortune bless you! may the middle distance Of your young life be pleasant as the foreground.

1899 C. E. Seashore in Univ. of Iowa Stud. Psychol. 2 29 The horizontal middle distances are overestimated by 4 per cent, on the average; the vertical, by 1 5 per cent.

1932 W. Faulkner Light in August i. 5 The vehicle does not seem to progress. It seems to hang suspended in the middle distance forever.

1974 ‘J. le Carré’ Tinker, Tailor ix. 66 He was gazing not at Tarr, but myopically into the middle distance.

1994 P. Muldoon New Weather 30 Through time their sharp features Have softened and blurred, As if they still inhabited The middle distances.

2003 A. Ziegele tr. A. Papageorgiou & W. Spitzley Handbk. Competitive Volleyball iii. 82 Serves originating from ‘middle distances’ behind the end line should not be any higher than 2 meters above the volleyball net.

1885 Baily's Mag. Sports & Pastimes Oct. 467 Just as the sprint races may be said to begin at 100 yards and to end at 300, and as the middle distances may be reckoned from that to 1,500 yards, so long-distance running may be held to include all those between one and twenty, or perhaps even between one and fifty miles.

1896 A. Lee Track Athletics in Detail 13 The middle distances are the hardest events for an athlete to work at without the assistance of a trainer.

1897 Earl of Suffolk et al. Encycl. Sport I. 56/1 It is fairer to describe a Quarter Mile as one of the middle distances.

1916 J. H. Bancroft & W. D. Pulvermacher Handbk. Athletic Games 520 The most popular middle distances are 440 yards (¼ mile) and 880 yards (½ mile).

2000 M. Poehlein in J. L. Rogers USA Track & Field Coaching Man. vii. 94 The middle-distances have always been among my favorite of the track events to coach.

1886 Bell's Life in London 3 Mar. 4/4 A magnificent trophy emblematic of the World's Middle Distance Championship.

1891 Harper's Young People 7 Apr. 384/2 Among middle-distance men, as among sprinters, there are various types of runners.

1897 Earl of Suffolk et al. Encycl. Sport I. 56/1 The sprinter must use different tactics to the middle-distance runner.

1929 G. M. Butler Mod. Athletics v. 74 Speed..should be the middle-distance runner's main objective.

1946 Sun (Baltimore) 5 Aug. 12/5 Several of the nation's..middle distance runners are slated to start in the $20,000 Wilson Mile.

1960 Times 29 June 17/7 The emergence of a few brave front-runners has lifted the middle distance running out of the doldrums.

1998 Warwick Boar (Univ. Warwick Students' Union) 3 Feb. 16/4 Twenty-four exhausted bodies were feeling the full effects of having been stretched to every possible limit, during an events bill which included sprinting, middle-distance running,..and a 2000 metre race on rowing machines.

2007 Northern Echo (Darlington, Yorks.) 2 Feb. 21 There must be something about middle-distance running that lends itself to great rivalries.