middleweight

[ mid-l-weyt ]

noun
  1. a boxer or other contestant intermediate in weight between a welterweight and a light heavyweight, especially a professional boxer weighing up to 160 pounds (72.5 kilograms).

adjective
  1. Boxing. of or relating to middleweights: the middleweight division.

  2. (of a horse, especially a hunter) able to carry up to 185 pounds (83.9 kilograms).

Origin of middleweight

1
First recorded in 1870–75; middle + weight

Words Nearby middleweight

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use middleweight in a sentence

  • Then, in surprising findings in the early 2010s, Auger Observatory scientists inferred from the shapes of the air showers that ultrahigh-energy rays are mostly middleweight nuclei, such as carbon, nitrogen and silicon.

  • And for another fifteen years he had been the guiding brain to a fine middleweight.

    Vital Ingredient | Gerald Vance
  • Hickey was in the heavy middleweight class while he was still a bantam.

    Skippy Bedelle | Owen Johnson
  • He looked like Pollyanna, after eight or ten shots at the middleweight title.

    Occasion for Disaster | Gordon Randall Garrett
  • The middleweight thought that it was a joke on him, and was careful not to hit hard.

    Famous Flyers | David Goodger (goodger@python.org)
  • And he knocked out the second middleweight, and the third middleweight.

    Famous Flyers | David Goodger (goodger@python.org)

British Dictionary definitions for middleweight

middleweight

/ (ˈmɪdəlˌweɪt) /


noun
    • a professional boxer weighing 154–160 pounds (70–72.5 kg)

    • an amateur boxer weighing 71–75 kg (157–165 pounds)

    • (as modifier): a middleweight contest

  1. a wrestler in a similar weight category (usually 172–192 pounds (78–87 kg))

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012