median
noun · adjective
Simple meaning
A line segment joining the vertex of triangle to the midpoint of the opposing side.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
meedeeuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmidiən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
geometry
A line segment joining the vertex of triangle to the midpoint of the opposing side.
us
The area separating two lanes of opposite-direction traffic.
statistics
A number separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, population, or probability distribution. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one (e.g., the median of {3, 3, 5, 9, 11} is 5). If there is an even number of observations, then there is no single middle value; the median is then usually defined to be the mean of the two middle values.
adjective
Relating to Media or Medes.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A line segment joining the vertex of triangle to the midpoint of the opposing side.
Used this way, median is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a mathematical use: it is defined precisely and belongs to working with figures and calculations rather than to ordinary conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Mathematics
- Geometry
- Academic writing
- Education/classroom
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use median
- “The car crossed the median strip into oncoming traffic by accident.”
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: line segment joining the vertex of triangle to the midpoint of the opposing side
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.