Word.ws English Dictionary

middle way

middle way noun: the middle of three paths.

Noun

middle way (plural middle ways)

  1. The middle of three paths.
  2. An intermediate course (of action, policy etc) between two extremes; a compromise.
    • Obama's choice, according to McChrystal, a former special forces commander, boils down to this: Escalate or evacuate, get on or get out; there is no middle way that does not invite calamity on a grand scale.2009, Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, 21 Sep 09
    Synonyms:
    mean
  3. The teaching of the Buddha of neither living in great excess nor in great asceticism.
  4. The midpoint of a person's life; middle age.

middle way meaning in Indonesian and Myanmar

middle way in Indonesian

intermediate course of action
jalan tengah

middle way in Myanmar

middle of three paths
မဇ္ဇိမပဋိပဒါ majji.ma.pa.ti.pa.da

Synonyms of middle way

Forms of middle way

pluralmiddle ways
alternative formMiddle Way

Origin of middle way

From middle + way. Compare Dutch middelweg, German Mittelweg; compare also Latin via media.

Questions about middle way

What does middle way mean?
Middle way means the middle of three paths.
What is middle way in Indonesian?
Middle way in Indonesian is jalan tengah. See Middle way meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is middle way?
Middle way is a noun.
What is the plural of middle way?
The plural of middle way is middle ways.

Words near middle way in the dictionary

  1. Middle Wallop
  2. middle watch
  3. middle watcher
  4. middle watches
  5. Middle Watut
  6. middle way
  7. middle ways
  8. Middle Welsh
  9. Middle West
  10. Middle White
  11. middle youth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: middle way (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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Cite this entry: “middle way.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/middle_way. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.