mediant
/ˈmiːdi.ənt/noun
mediant is a noun meaning “The third degree of the diatonic scale” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-E-D-I-A-N-T, and it appears about once in every 54 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of mediant is mediants.
What does mediant mean?
noun
- 1
The third degree of the diatonic scale.
- 2
A rational number whose numerator is the sum of the numerators of two other given rational numbers and whose denominator is the sum of the denominators of those same two other rational numbers.
For any tangent pair of Ford circles corresponding to rational numbers r and s, the Ford circle tangent to both of them corresponds to the rational number which is the mediant of r and s.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce mediant?
- /ˈmiːdi.ənt/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of mediant
- mediants plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is mediant?
Mediant appears about once in every 54 million words in written English, the 228,409th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does mediant come from?
From Italian mediante, from Latin mediānt- (“being in the middle”), present active participle of mediō (“to be in the middle”), from medius (“middle”), from Proto-Italic *meðios, from Proto-Indo-European *medʰyo- (“between”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).