What It Means
: of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance : ordinary, so-so
Mediocre in Context
They sensed that mediocre students like Roosevelt really did possess a set of virtues that needed to be protected and cherished.
—David Brooks, New York Times Book Review, 6 Nov. 2005
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The Enduring Moderation of Mediocre
One of the things that is remarkable about mediocre is the extent to which it has retained its meaning over the course of more than four centuries of continual use. The word, when used as an adjective, has changed very little, if at all, in its meaning since it was used in a 1586 book titled The English Secretorie (our earliest known evidence): “Mediocre, a meane betwixt high and low, vehement and slender, too much and too little as we saye. . . .” The word comes to English via Middle French from the Latin word mediocris, meaning “of medium size, moderate, middling, commonplace,” and perhaps originally “halfway to the top.” The noun form of mediocre is mediocrity.
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