mainstream

From main +‎ stream. Cognate with Icelandic meginstraumur (“a main current, mainstream”).

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mainstream (comparative more mainstream, superlative most mainstream)

1. Used or accepted broadly rather than by small portions of population, market, scientific community, etc.

   They often carry stories you won't find in the mainstream media.

   • 2011, Taner Edis, Science and Nonbelief, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 153:

     As unsubstantiated claims receive significant backing, skeptics and defenders of mainstream science enter the fray.

   • 2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Aylesbury (2009)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 61:

     The mainstream media hones in on bad news stories where UK railways are concerned, yet gives scant attention to the many items of good news emerging from the network.

   • 2022 April 20, Rim-Sarah Alouane, “Marine Le Pen Is as Dangerous as Ever”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     If Ms. Le Pen looks more mainstream now, it’s because the mainstream looks more like her.

• Nouns often used with "mainstream": media, music, art, press, news, society, culture, economics, school, party, politics, religion, education, theory, science, philosophy, views

• (used or accepted broadly): common, usual, widespread, conventional

• fringe, nonmainstream, alternative

mainstream (plural mainstreams)

1. The principal current in a flow, such as a river or flow of air
2. (usually with the) That which is common; the norm.

   ideas outside of the mainstream

   • 1988 September 30, Tom Wicker, quoting George H. W. Bush, “Ol' Man Mainstream”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     George Herbert Walker Bush of Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University proclaimed in the first Presidential candidates' debate that he was “in touch with the mainstream of America.”

   • 1991 July 14, Andrew Pollack, “A Quirky Loner Goes Mainstream”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN:

     Long content with being the BMW of the computer industry, suppying finely crafted machines to a relatively small number of fanatic customers, Apple now wants to become a Ford or Toyota, to move into the mainstream.

   • 2021 October 20, Dr Joseph Brennan, “A key part of our diverse railway heritage”, in RAIL, number 942, page 55:

     "Railways seldom slavishly followed styles to be seen in the mainstream of contemporary architecture," HE [Historic England] explains.

mainstream (third-person singular simple present mainstreams, present participle mainstreaming, simple past and past participle mainstreamed)

1. (transitive) To popularize, to normalize, to render mainstream.
   • 2011, Jeff Change, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, page 420:

     Just as the gang peace movement desired to mainstream hardcore bangers into civic society, The Chronic wanted to drive hardcore rap into the popstream.

   • 2025 May 23, Charlie Warzel, “What Are People Still Doing on X?”, in The Atlantic‎^[4]:

     Acknowledging the role X plays in mainstreaming the worst constituencies makes for awkward conversations with those who continue to use it.

2. (intransitive) To become mainstream.
   • 2013, Catherine L. Albanese, America: Religions and Religion, 5th edition, Boston: Cengage Learning, →ISBN, page 262:

     In a nonchurch context, we can look more explicitly at formerly New Age practices to see if and how they have mainstreamed.

3. (transitive, education, chiefly US) To educate (a disabled student) together with non-disabled students.
   • 1985 April 14, Barbara Gerbasi, “Mainstreaming My Son”, in The New York Times‎^[5], →ISSN:

     Despite these beliefs, the decision to send my son to a regular school was not made easily. I didn't know of any child as disabled as he who had been mainstreamed.

• “mainstream”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “mainstream media”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Unadapted borrowing from English mainstream.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛjn.strim/
• Rhymes: -ɛjnstrim
• Syllabification: main‧stream

mainstream m inan (related adjective mainstreamowy)

1. mainstream (dominant way of thinking or the most popular form of action)
2. (jazz) mainstream jazz (term coined in the 1950s by music journalist Stanley Dance, who considered anything within the popular jazz of the Swing Era "mainstream", and did not include the bebop style)

• mainstream in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• mainstream in Polish dictionaries at PWN
• mainstream in PWN's encyclopedia

Unadapted borrowing from English mainstream.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmeinstɾim/ [ˈmẽĩns.t̪ɾĩm]
• Rhymes: -einstɾim
• Syllabification: mains‧tream

mainstream m (plural mainstreams)

1. mainstream

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.