midden

[ mid-n ]

/ ˈmɪd n /

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noun

a dunghill or refuse heap.

kitchen midden.

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Origin of midden

1300–50; Middle English midding<Old Danish mykdyngja, equivalent to myk manure + dyngja pile (Danish mødding)

Words nearby midden

midcult, midday, Middelburg, middelmannetjie, middelskot, midden, middie, middle, middle age, middle-aged, Middle Ages

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2022

How to use midden in a sentence

Over the years, he’s handled hundreds of middens—and smelled them, too.
What’s in a packrat’s petrified pee? Just a few thousand years of secrets.|Rachel Feltman|August 12, 2021|Popular-Science
Of course, to render a midden scientifically valuable, you need more than a sensitive nose.
What’s in a packrat’s petrified pee? Just a few thousand years of secrets.|Rachel Feltman|August 12, 2021|Popular-Science
This dissolves the amberat that holds the midden matrix together.
What’s in a packrat’s petrified pee? Just a few thousand years of secrets.|Rachel Feltman|August 12, 2021|Popular-Science
This can lead to the description of new species, as happened with Ptinus priminidi, a never-before-seen spider beetle plucked out of a midden in modern-day Arizona in 1976.
What’s in a packrat’s petrified pee? Just a few thousand years of secrets.|Rachel Feltman|August 12, 2021|Popular-Science

As successive generations of packrats add layer after layer to a midden, they slowly build boulder-sized masses in caves, cliff faces, and other nooks and crannies that can persist for millennia.
What’s in a packrat’s petrified pee? Just a few thousand years of secrets.|Rachel Feltman|August 12, 2021|Popular-Science
He'll shoot higher that shoots at the moon, than he that shoots at the midden, e'en though he may miss his mark.
The Proverbs of Scotland|Alexander Hislop
Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes them all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child.
Kim|Rudyard Kipling
Possibly the party kept too far inland to see the shell midden sites along the Bay shore.
The Aboriginal Population of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California|S. F. Cook
"Saft beddin's gude for sair banes," quo' Howie when he streekit himsel on the midden-head.
The Proverbs of Scotland|Alexander Hislop
Whether they be remnants of an elevated sea-beach, or of some Indian ‘kitchen-midden,’ I dare not decide.
At Last|Charles Kingsley

British Dictionary definitions for midden

midden

/ (ˈmɪdən) /

noun

archaic, or dialect a dunghill or pile of refuse
dialect a dustbin
Northern English dialect an earth closet

See kitchen midden

Word Origin for midden

C14: from Scandinavian; compare Danish mödding from mög muck + dynge pile

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

midden

Origin of midden

Words nearby midden

Words related to midden

How to use midden in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for midden

Word Origin for midden