Word.ws English Dictionary

middelmannetjie

Syllables: mid·del·man·ne·tjie/ˈmɪd(ə)lˌmanəki/US/ˈmɪd(ə)lˌmænəki/

middelmannetjie noun: a ridge between ruts made by wheels in a dirt or gravel road.

middelmannetjie: a ridge between ruts made by wheels in a dirt or gravel road
Image: „The World To-Day“ (Hearst's International), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

middelmannetjie (plural middelmannetjies)

  1. (South Africa) A ridge between ruts made by wheels in a dirt or gravel road.
    • Spoor [of a hippopotamus] […] Well-worn paths, some 20 cm wide, lead up from rivers, the four-toed tracks running parallel, and clearly indicating a ‘middelmannetjie’.1996, Clive Walker, Signs of the Wild, 5th edition, Cape Town: Struik Publishers, →ISBN, page 141
    • An old Ford was going down a road that had a formidable middelmannetjie (hump down the middle). This middelmannetjie was so high that the front axle of the car caught on it, the car somersaulted, and Trichardt and his passenger, a man called Van Niekerk, were flung out and broke their necks.2005, Shirley Bell, The Happy Warrior: The Story of T. C. Robertson, Howick, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: T. C. Robertson Trust, →ISBN, page 23

Examples of middelmannetjie in a sentence

  • The farm road with the high middelmannetjie finally came out at a big farmhouse with a lot of chickens running around.2005, Graham [K.] Jooste, Rugby Stories from the Platteland, Johannesburg: 30° South Publishers, →ISBN, page 36:
  • [T]he two tracks made by four-wheel-drive vehicles with high clearances left a never-ending high point in the middle – the middelmannetjie as known to local whites.2009, Jonathan Lawley, Beyond the Malachite Hills: A Life of Colonial Service and Business in the New Africa, London; New York, N.Y.: I.B....
  • [Y]ou are riding at 80 km/h on a typical Karoo dirt road, with clear two lane tyre tracks, and a middelmannetjie – that collection of sand, pebbles and dust dividing the 'lanes'.2013, Deon Meyer, Dirt Busters: A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking, Cape Town: Tafelberg, →ISBN:

Forms of middelmannetjie

pluralmiddelmannetjies

Origin of middelmannetjie

Borrowed from Afrikaans middelmannetjie (“little man in the middle”) (analysable as middel (“middle”) + man (“man”) + -etjie (“diminutive suffix”)), from Dutch middel (“middle”) + mannetje (“a short man”) (from man (“man”) + -etje, a variant of -tje (diminutive suffix)).

Questions about middelmannetjie

What does middelmannetjie mean?
Middelmannetjie means a ridge between ruts made by wheels in a dirt or gravel road.
How do you use middelmannetjie in a sentence?
The farm road with the high middelmannetjie finally came out at a big farmhouse with a lot of chickens running around.
What part of speech is middelmannetjie?
Middelmannetjie is a noun.
How do you pronounce middelmannetjie?
Middelmannetjie is pronounced /ˈmɪd(ə)lˌmanəki/ (UK).
What is the plural of middelmannetjie?
The plural of middelmannetjie is middelmannetjies.

Words near middelmannetjie in the dictionary

  1. middeck
  2. Middelburg
  3. Middelfart
  4. Middelfarter
  5. Middelfarters
  6. middelmannetjie
  7. middelmannetjies
  8. midden
  9. Midden-Delfland
  10. Midden-Drenthe
  11. Midden-Groningen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: middelmannetjie (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-middlemannetjie.wav.

Cite this entry: “middelmannetjie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/middelmannetjie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.