Mid-Atlantic

From mid- +‎ Atlantic.

Mid-Atlantic

1. The middle of the East Coast of the United States, typically consisting of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, DC.
2. The middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
   1. Used alone, with "the".
      • 1880 April, William B. Carpenter, “The Deep Sea and its Contents”, in The Nineteenth Century, volume 7, number 38, page 609:

        All the best hydrographers, both of this country and of the United States, agree in the conclusion that the Florida Current dies out in the mid-Atlantic, losing all the attributes by which it had been previously distinguished— […]

      • 1919 November, Commander John H. Towers, “The Great Hop”, in Everybody's Magazine, volume XLI, number 5, Ridgeway Company, page 11:

        They gave us a wonderful cheer, wished us good luck by wireless, then headed out for the mid-Atlantic to take up their posts.

      • 2005, Kendall F. Haven, Wonders of the Sea, Libraries Unlimited, →ISBN, page 78:

        New evidence hints at the possibility that a landmass might have existed in the mid-Atlantic as recently as 12,000 years ago and that […]

   2. Used alone, after a verb or preposition of location, without "the".
      • 1875, Ralph Abercromby, letter to the editor, in Sir Norman Lockyer (editor), Nature, Volume 12, Number 311 (14 October 1875), Macmillan and Co., page 514:

        Cyclones coming from Labrador work round this hump to the S.E., and die out in mid-Atlantic.

      • 1906 January, Edwin Fowler, “At Bay”, in The Metropolitan Magazine, volume XXIII, number IV, page 440:

        I made my way up and found we were hurtling out toward mid-Atlantic.

      • 1957, Malcolm Francis Willoughby, The U.S. Coast Guard in World War II, Ayer Publishing, published 1980, →ISBN, page 128:

        Just before invasion of Normandy in June 1944, three additional stations, requested by the Army, were located far out in mid-Atlantic.

      • 2011, Andrew Wheen, Dot-Dash to Dot.com: How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet, Springer, →ISBN, page 20:

        The plan was that the Niagara would lay its half of the cable first and the Agamemnon would then take over when they reached mid-Atlantic.

   3. Used as an attributive modifier in compounds such as "mid-Atlantic current" and "Mid-Atlantic Ridge": located in, or otherwise relating to, the mid-Atlantic.
      • 1910, W. H. Holmes, “Some Problems of the American Race”, in American Anthropologist, Volume 12, Number 2 (April–June 1910), the American Anthropological Association, page 173:

        As they appear today these approaches are first, the north Atlantic chain of islands connecting northern Europe with Labrador; second, the mid-Atlantic currents setting steadily westward from the African coast to South America and the West Indies; third,

      • 1982, Roger Hékinian, Petrology of the Ocean Floor, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 11:

        The gabbros from both the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Mid-Indian Oceanic Ridge, showing a wide range in the FeO/MgO ratio (0.30–2.90), suggest a marked trend of fractionation (Fig. 1-3).

      • 2007, David Owen, Anti-Submarine Warfare: An Illustrated History, Naval Institute Press, →ISBN, page 103:

        Instead, British historian Dr Alfred Price has suggested that, had a smaller number of these bombers been available a year later, the results in the mid-Atlantic battle might have been very different.

   4. (figuratively) Used as an attributive modifier in compounds such as "mid-Atlantic accent" and "mid-Atlantic English": half-American, half-European; combining American and European elements.
      • 1982, John Cornelius, Liverpool 8, Liverpool University Press, published 2001, →ISBN, page 29:

        ‘That lecturer sure is a pain in the ass, man,’ said Keith, in a contrived, mid-Atlantic accent.

      • 2002, Marko Modiano, “Standardization processes and the mid-Atlantic English paradigm”, in Andrew Robert Linn, Nicola McLelland, editors, Standardization: Studies from the Germanic Languages‎, John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 237–238:

        With English, however, the notion that there is a given standard, be it BrE or AmE, is currently being undermined by the tendency of Europeans to mix features of AmE and BrE, which along with traces of a mother tongue accent and mother-toungue-based discourse strategies, now characterize the language behaviour of a growing number of foreign-language speakers of English living in mainland Europe. One way of describing this type of language behaviour is to use the designator Mid-Atlantic English (MAE) (see Modiano 1996a; 1996b; 1998; 1999a; 2002).

      • 2008, Susan Pitchford, Identity Tourism: Imaging and Imagining the Nation, Emerald Group Publishing, →ISBN, page 7:

        Especially given the continued dominance of the developed North, there is some cause for concern that a creeping cultural homogenization will leave us with only a bland, mid-Atlantic culture where local identities once flourished.

Mid-Atlantic (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to this region.