middlebrown.adj.
/ˈmɪdlbraʊ/, U.S. /ˈmɪd(ə)lˌbraʊ/ colloquial. Frequently derogatory.
A. n.
A person who is only moderately intellectual or who has average or limited cultural interests (sometimes with the implication of pretensions to more than this); a thing regarded as intellectually unchallenging or of limited intellectual or cultural value.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > bad taste > [noun] > low-browism > lowbrow or middlebrow
lowbrow1901
middlebrow1912
lowbrow1913
mezzo-brow1925
the mind > goodness and badness > quality of being good > mediocrity > [noun] > mediocre person > of broad or average cultural interests
middlebrow1912
broad-brow1927
mid-brow1928
1912 Nation 25 Jan. 75/1 [Quoting B. W. Huebsch] There is an alarmingly wide chasm..between the high-brow..and the low-brow... It is to be hoped that culture will soon be democratized through some less conventional system of education, giving rise to a new type that might be called the middle-brow, who will consider books as a source of intellectual enjoyment.
1924 Freeman's Jrnl. (Dublin) 3 May 6 Ireland's musical destiny, in spite of what the highbrows or middlebrows may say, is intimately bound up with the festivals.
1934 C. Lambert Music Ho! iv. 247 Hindemith is the journalist of modern music, the supreme middlebrow of our times.
1956 R. Macaulay Towers of Trebizond xxii. 258 Mozart is every one's tea, pleasing to highbrows, middlebrows and lowbrows alike.
1990 Times 6 Feb. 16/4 The combination of aesthetics and ‘drag’ reflects Bartlett's twin preoccupation with ‘high art and popular culture, which come together in their desperation to avoid the middlebrow’.
B. adj.
Of a person: only moderately intellectual; of average or limited cultural interests (sometimes with the implication of pretensions to more than this). Of an artistic work, etc.: of limited intellectual or cultural value; demanding or involving only a moderate degree of intellectual application, typically as a result of not deviating from convention.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > bad taste > [adjective] > lowbrow or middlebrow
lowbrow1907
mezzo-brow1925
middlebrow1928
upper-middlebrow1956
the mind > goodness and badness > quality of being good > mediocrity > [adjective] > of broad or average cultural interests
middlebrow1928
mid-brow1966
1928 Observer 17 June 26 The standard of ‘middle-brow’ music and plays is always rather low.
1934 D. Thomas Let. 9 May (1987) 132 You've struck such a curious medium in your poetry lately that publication becomes very difficult; there are so few medium papers left. By that I don't mean ‘middlebrow’ or anything like that.
1965 C. Walsh in J. Gibb Light on C.S. Lewis 110 He quickly gained a wide audience... It was predominately high-brow and middle-brow.
1972 L. Alcock By South Cadbury i. 22 The onerous and unrewarding task of Secretary was filled by Geoffrey Ashe, writer of distinguished middle-brow books on the problems of the historical Arthur.
1994 H. Burton Leonard Bernstein iv. xxx. 330 The program was arguably too rarefied for a festive occasion attended by an audience of middlebrow dignitaries.
1995 Economist 18 Mar. 31/2 Mr Etzioni found left-wing academics particularly hostile to his ideas, which many of them consider too middle-brow and wishy-washy.
Derivatives
ˈmiddlebrowism n. the condition or state of being middlebrow; a social or cultural manifestation of middlebrow thought.
ΚΠ
1955 R. Chase in Commentary July 59/1 Three questions confront us when we hear the plea for a cultural middlebrowism in America.
1974 Times Lit. Suppl. 12 July 737/4 What makes the middlebrowism of Galsworthy or Wells so arid.
1993 Daily Tel. 5 Oct. 25/8 England has come to suffer from an anti-achievement ethos in both the arts and the sciences: a cosy middle-browism in the humanities,..and a retreat from hard science.
1999 Independent on Sunday 3 Jan. (Culture section) 8/2 He..helped out with Ford's transatlantic review (capital letters evidently signalled bourgeois complacency and middle-browism).
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2002; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1912