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If I recall correctly from my high school latin studies words ending with -ior meant to express a property is more of something compared to others, like superior. So junior meant to be younger.

That's why I'm baffled with medior.

Since English is English and not Latin by tradition it might be a "legit" word. Since I'm not a native English speaker I don't know. So...

Is using medior to describe mid-level expertise is right or wrong?

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    As a native English speaker, I had never heard of this word. Then again, I'm an uncouth American, so what do I know? Looking it up, apparently it is business jargon, meaning what you say. It was probably formed by analogy with junior and senior, mistaking the comparative ending -ior with the agentive ending -or. Someone with more expertise should probably write this up; all I can provide is wild speculation.
    – No Name
    Apr 3, 2020 at 22:14
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    It would rather depend on the expertise that you're refering to. Traditional skills like carpentry still use apprentice, journeyman and master. If, however you're refering to programmers, then "medior" seems to have begun making its way it into the language via the Dutch. Never encountered it in any other field though.
    – Jiminy Cricket.
    Apr 4, 2020 at 0:59
  • Related: More than an intermediate but less so than an expert.
    – jsw29
    May 15 at 20:15

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A quick check has shown that 'medior' does not appear in any reputable dictionaries, not even in ones of slang or jargon. We can conclude that it is not a widely accepted word - not a 'real' English word in any normal sense. That does not stop you using it if you think it will be understood, but most people won't be familiar. Some Latin speakers will probably understand it.

The normal word for "between junior and senior" is "intermediate".

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    Yes, it's reasonable to make up a word if people can guess or easily work out what it means, but I don't think that's the case here, especially when you can say "intermediate" etc.
    – Stuart F
    May 15 at 14:05
  • Why use an attribute at all, if the others are comparative?
    – pailhead
    Sep 24 at 12:36
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The word medior is used in Dutch to express exactly what you mentioned. According to Encyclo.nl "Medior is used in various contexts as a name for a member of a particular middle group. For example, in job vacancies medior stands for 'member of the middle management', between the seniors (staff members) and juniors (starting employees)."

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    Do you have any evidence that this Dutch word is in active use in English?
    – KillingTime
    Mar 1, 2021 at 8:53
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    @KillingTime I just ran across this on an English language posting for a tech position on LinkedIn: Tooling: Javascript experience Strong Node.JS experience Medior+( 2 years+) Dutch speaking linkedin.com/jobs/view/2444442195
    – Kris White
    Mar 27, 2021 at 1:15
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    The article at encyclo.nl also describes the word as a neologism. Note also that this job posting would not be the first time that a Dutch word was incorrectly used in English.
    – user3414663
    Dec 20, 2021 at 15:07
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Within my ~20 years of experience, we have been using Junior, Medior, and Senior for the level of seniority within a job/role/position. It is very common at least in the IT/Software Engineering field.

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    This is the IT/Software Engineering field in the Netherlands?
    – KillingTime
    May 15 at 14:02
  • I’ve been researching this because I encountered the term in the balkans. I find it odd that it’s being used in the IT context where one of the more important things is to remove redundancy. If there is a junior X and a senior X, X is just X, nor medior X. The word sounds… odd. Can you please confirm if this is the Netherlands you are talking about?
    – pailhead
    Sep 24 at 12:34

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