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Generalized use of mid-

Posted By: Nack Ballard
Date: Friday, 2 December 2011, at 2:15 p.m.

In Response To: An Analogy to Football (Taper_Mike)

If you want to use "mid-anything" in backgammon, it ought to be centered (as closely as possible) around the midpoint.

It IS centered around the midpoint as closely as possible, given the constraint that it is a quadrant. But I know what you mean. :) Also, I would prefer to say "it should ideally be" rather than "ought to," though perhaps that's just semantics.

Being interrupted midsentence doesn't mean that it was at the exact middle of the intended sentence. Midterm doesn't have to fall exactly in the middle of a term. Midnight (or midflight) isn't necessarily in the exact middle moment of the night (or flight). [For that matter, Midwest isn't in the exact middle of the west or even in the exact middle of the country.] My deskside F&W dictionary defines the prefix "mid-" as "being approximately in the middle," and again as "in a position approximately halfway between high and low."

If the two-and-a-half point difference between the midpoint being centered on instead of just being part of the midquadrant (or midquad or midboard) were people's only stumbling block on the term, I would feel it could be easily overcome and I would start using the term. But I fear such is not the case. :)

Henceforward (at least for now), I'll be mostly using Daniel's proposal of "far outer board." It's new, but I think easily recognizable as a condensed form of far side outer board (where "far side" and "outer board" are terms I already routinely use).

Nack

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