English

Proper noun

Mid-Atlantic

1. The middle of the East Coast of the United States.
2. The middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
   1. Used alone, with "the".
      • 1880, William B. Carpenter, “The Deep Sea and its Contents”, in The Nineteenth Century, Volume 7, Number 38 (April 1880), 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, Commander John H. Towers, “The Great Hop”, in Everybody's Magazine, the Ridgeway Company, Volume XLI, Number Five (November 1919), 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 978-1-59158-279-3, 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), Macmillian and Co., page 514:

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

      • 1906, Edwin Fowler, "At Bay", in The Metropolitan Magazine, Volume XXIII, Number IV (January 1906), 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 (1980), ISBN 9780405130816, 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 978-1-4419-6759-6, 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 978-0-444-41967-5, 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 978-1-59114-014-6, 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 (2001), ISBN 978-0-85323-877-5, 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 and Nicola McLelland (editors), Standardization: Studies from the Germanic Languages, John Benjamins Publishing Company, ISBN 978-90-272-4747-6, 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 978-0-08-046618-7, 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.