maidan

From Hindustani میدان (medān) / मैदान (maidān), and its source, Persian میدان (meydân, maydān, “town-square or central place of gathering”), from Arabic مَيْدَان (maydān), itself an Iranian borrowing (see the Arabic entry for more), from Proto-Iranian *madyānah, from *mádyah (“middle”), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *mádʰyas, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos. Compare Avestan 𐬨𐬀𐬌𐬜𐬌𐬌𐬀 (maⁱδiia), Sanskrit मध्य (madhya), Latin medius.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /maɪˈdɑːn/, /ˈmaɪdɑːn/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /maɪˈdɑn/
• Rhymes: (UK) -ɑːn, (US) -ɑn

maidan (plural maidans)

1. (chiefly South Asia) A marketplace or other open space in or by a city or town; an esplanade. [from 16th c.]
   • 1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 5:

     Inland, the prospect alters. There is an oval maidan, and a long sallow hospital.

   • 1957, Lawrence Durrell, Justine, Faber, page 84:

     Below on the amorphous brown-violet meidan by the railway station […].

   • M. Crawford

     a gallop on the green maidan

• maidaun, meidan, meidaun, midan, mydan

• “maidan”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “maidan”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “maidan” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2025.

From Майда́н Незале́жності (Majdán Nezaléžnosti, “Independence Square”) in Kiev, from Ukrainian майда́н (majdán, “square”), from Ottoman Turkish میدان (meydan), from the same Persian source as above.

• Maydan

Maidan (plural Maidans or maidans)

1. Independence Square, the main city square in Kyiv, Ukraine. [from 1993]
2. The Orange Revolution protests that took place in Kiev’s Maidan in 2004–05; the Euromaidan protests of 2013–14; the protest movement associated with the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution.

For quotations using this term, see Citations:maidan.

• anti-maidan, antiMaidan
• AutoMaidan
• Euromaidan, EuroMaidan

• Maidan on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Maidan in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

• Damian, aidman, Mandia, Madani, Aminda, Dai Nam

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish میدان (meydan, “square, open space”), from Persian میدان (meydân), from Arabic مَيْدَان (maydān), itself an Iranian borrowing.

maidan n (plural maidane)

1. open space, undeveloped land within a city

• maidanez