the.com/middle ground
The place where both sides leave equally annoyed, which is how you know it worked.
means A position or compromise that lies between two opposing sides, accepting some of each.
from Straightforward English compounding, not slang or borrowing: 'middle' (from Old English 'middel,' rooted in the ancient Indo-European word for 'between') plus 'ground,' used in the old sense of terrain or turf one stands on or argues over. The physical image came first — contested land between two camps or armies — and the phrase walked from literal battlefield geography into the figurative territory of negotiation and debate, where it's been pitching its tent ever since.
- not the average
- splitting the difference isn't the same as being right
- negotiation myth
- best deals often abandon it entirely
- false balance risk
- treating facts and nonsense as equal halves
- rarely the midpoint
- usually just whoever argued louder, plus a discount