Medial
adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Any of various things that occur in the middle.
- 2 Any of various things that occur in the middle.; One or more letters that occur in the middle of a word.
- 1 Of or pertaining to a mean or average.
"medial allegation"
- 2 Situated in or near the middle; not at either end.; Pertaining to the inside; closer to the median plane of the body or the midline of an organ.
"The medial side of the knee faces the other knee, while the outer side of the knee is lateral."
- 3 Situated in or near the middle; not at either end.; Pertaining to the middle layer of a blood vessel, to its tunica media.
"Mönckeberg medial sclerosis"
- 4 Situated in or near the middle; not at either end.; Of or pertaining to the media and/or the areas of the wing next to it.
- 5 Situated in or near the middle; not at either end.; (of a speech sound, or a character or sequence thereof) In the middle of a word.
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- 6 Situated in or near the middle; not at either end.; (of a consonant) Central: produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue.
"Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well."
- 7 Situated in or near the middle; not at either end.; Closer to the addressee.
- 1 relating to or situated in or extending toward the middle wordnet
- 2 dividing an animal into right and left halves wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"He says when a person makes an emotional or moral decision, it activates a part of the brain, just behind the eyes, called the medial pre-frontal cortex."
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin mediālis (“middle”), from medius (“that is in the middle or midst”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix).
Related phrases
More for "medial"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.