middle-brow

English

Adjective

middle-brow (comparative more middle-brow, superlative most middle-brow)

1. Alternative form of middlebrow
   • 1998, Judy Simons, ‎Kate Fullbrook, Writing, a Woman's Business, page 35:

     Characteristically, the middle-brow novel was thus written for and by middle-class women, and could be stigmatised, to use Adorno's term, as a middle-class, bourgeois activity.

   • 2016, Arnold Kettle, An Introduction to the English Novel:

     'Middle-brow' literature — not to beat about the bush — is inferior literature adapted to the special tastes and needs of the middle class and of those who consciously or not adopt the values of that class.

   • 2020, Nicola Bishop, Lower-Middle-Class Nation:

     David Thorns sets out Suburbia (1973) as a study in which he aims to demonstrate that disdain for the 'middle-brow, conformist, respectable, uninspiring members of society who are quite content to potter around in their own rather limited world' was in fact a view that was 'divorced from the realities of suburban life'.

Noun

middle-brow (countable and uncountable, plural middle-brows)

1. Alternative form of middlebrow
   • 1949 April 11, “High Brow, Low-Brow, Middle-brow”, in LIFE, page 99:

     The high-brow would like to get rid of the middle-brow, but the middle-brow outnumbers him.

   • 1988, Isaac Rosenfeld, ‎Mark Shechner, Preserving the Hunger:, page 77:

     The criticism of society which proceeds from this direction is self-undermined, for it is full of the images, the rhythms, the poses, the easy values of the successful midle layer, the middle competence, the middle-brow.

   • 2012, Simon Stewart, Culture and the Middle Classes:

     However, most cultural intermediaries, those in charge of television and radio schedules and newspapers and magazines, are middle-brows, and yet have considerable means at their disposal.