Other forms: medians
The median is the middle value when everything is put in order. The median wage, median age, above the median.
It is the honest average for skewed data: a handful of enormous salaries drag the mean upward and leave the median where most people actually are, which is why income is reported this way. In American English the median is also the strip between carriageways. Note that the Latin simply means middle.
1nounmedianThe middle value when everything is put in order.
“The median age of the town's population has risen as young people move away.”
2nounstripThe strip between carriageways, in American use.
“The car skidded across the median and into the oncoming lanes.”
median is a statistical measure.
Latin medianus comes from medius, middle. Mean, medium and mediate come from the same middle.
Proto-Indo-European
*médʰyos — middle
Latin
mediānus — of or pertaining to the middle
Middle French
median
English, today
median
Built from
Borrowed from Middle French median, from Latin mediānus (“of or pertaining to the middle”), from medius (“middle”) (see medium), from Proto-Indo-European médʰyos (“middle”). a doublet of mean and mizzen. Cognate with Old English midde, middel (“middle”). More at middle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA