mezzanine

English
WOTD – 20 August 2022

Etymology
PIE word
*médʰyos
A mezzanine (noun sense 1.1; left) in a bookshop in São Paulo, Brazil.
A mezzanine (noun sense 1.1) made of structural steel used for industrial storage.

The noun is borrowed from French mezzanine, and from its etymon Italian mezzanino, from mezzano (“(adjective) middle; (noun) go-between”) + -ino (diminutive suffix).[1] Mezzano is derived from Latin mediānus (“central, middle”, adjective), from medius (“mid, middle”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“middle”)) + -ānus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’).

The adjective and verb are derived from the noun.

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈmɛzəniːn/, /ˌmɛzəˈniːn/, /ˈmɛtsə-/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈmɛzˌnin/, /ˌmɛzˈnin/, /ˈmɛzəˌnin/, /ˌmɛzəˈnin/
  • Rhymes: (some pronunciations) -iːn
  • Hyphenation: mez‧zan‧ine

Noun

mezzanine (plural mezzanines)

  1. (architecture)
    1. An intermediate floor or storey in between the main floors of a building; specifically, one that is directly above the ground floor which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, and so resembles a large balcony overlooking the ground floor; an entresol.
      On our way to the top floor, we stopped at the mezzanine.
      • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 17: Ithaca]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part III [Nostos], page 666:
        [W]ater closet on mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong window, tipup seat, bracket lamp, brass tierod brace, armrests, footstool and artistic oleograph on inner face of door: […]
      • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 July 2022:
        In these sheds, individual products rest on short racks, so they can be reached more easily by employees who pick and box orders. In order to fit more racks, companies put in several mezzanine levels. As a result, the sheds rise taller: 21 metres, compared to B2B’s 15 metres.
      • 2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire: Bauer Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 68:
        On arrival at Birmingham New Street, I make my way upstairs to the mezzanine to get shots of an almost deserted concourse, polka-dotted with social distancing circles like some strange board-game.
    2. (by extension) An apartment, room, etc., on such an intermediate floor.
    3. (Canada, US) The lowest balcony in an auditorium, cinema, theatre, etc.; the dress circle.
    4. (obsolete)
      1. Additional flooring laid over a floor to bring it up to some height or level.
      2. In full mezzanine window: a small window at the height of a mezzanine floor (sense 1.1) or an attic, used to light these floors.
  2. (theater, obsolete) A floor under the stage, from which contrivances such as traps are worked.

Derived terms

Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Adjective

mezzanine (not comparable)

  1. (banking, business) Characteristic of or relating to high-interest loans which have no collateral, and are regarded as intermediate in nature, ranking above equity but below secured loans.
    • 2020, Katharina Pistor, chapter 4, in The Code of Capital […] , Princeton University Press, →ISBN:
      This new vehicle funded the purchases of these tranches by issuing fixed-income interests to investors who were seeking high returns and who were willing to believe that by repackaging mezzanine tranches in MBS structures, some tranches could be designated as safe enough to obtain a AAA or AA rating.
  2. (engineering) Fulfilling an intermediate or secondary function.
    To make interconnections easier, we added a mezzanine PCB.

Translations

Verb

mezzanine (third-person singular simple present mezzanines, present participle mezzanining, simple past and past participle mezzanined)

  1. (transitive) To fit (a building or other place) with a mezzanine floor.

References
  1. “mezzanine, n. and adj.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “mezzanine, n. and adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

French

Etymology
PIE word
*médʰyos

Borrowed from Italian mezzanino, from mezzano (“(adjective) middle; (noun) go-between”) + -ino (diminutive suffix). Mezzano is derived from Latin mediānus (“central, middle”, adjective), from medius (“mid, middle”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos (“middle”)) + -ānus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /mɛ(d).za.nin/, /me(d).za.nin/
  • Audio(file)

Noun

mezzanine f (plural mezzanines)

  1. (architecture) mezzanine; entresol

Descendants
  • → English: mezzanine

Further reading
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