Noun: middelmannetjie
| Singular | middelmannetjie |
| Plural | middelmannetjies |
Sample Sentences
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Spoor [of a hippopotamus] […] Well-worn paths, some 20 cm wide, lead up from rivers, the four-toed tracks running parallel, and clearly indicating a ‘middelmannetjie’. [1996, Clive Walker, Signs of the Wild, 5th edition, Cape Town: Struik Publishers, →ISBN, page 141:]
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An old Ford was going down a road that had a formidable middelmannetjie (hump down the middle). This middelmannetjie was so high that the front axle of the car caught on it, the car somersaulted, and Trichardt and his passenger, a man called Van Niekerk, were flung out and broke their necks. [2005, Shirley Bell, The Happy Warrior: The Story of T. C. Robertson, Howick, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: T. C. Robertson Trust, →ISBN, page 23:]
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The farm road with the high middelmannetjie finally came out at a big farmhouse with a lot of chickens running around. [2005, Graham [K.] Jooste, Rugby Stories from the Platteland, Johannesburg: 30° South Publishers, →ISBN, page 36:]
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[T]he two tracks made by four-wheel-drive vehicles with high clearances left a never-ending high point in the middle – the middelmannetjie as known to local whites. I had to keep either the right or the left wheels on it. [2009, Jonathan Lawley, Beyond the Malachite Hills: A Life of Colonial Service and Business in the New Africa, London; New York, N.Y.: I.B. Tauris, →ISBN:]
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[Y]ou are riding at 80 km/h on a typical Karoo dirt road, with clear two lane tyre tracks, and a middelmannetjie – that collection of sand, pebbles and dust dividing the 'lanes'. You are looking at the herd of springbok to your right, and you stray onto the middelmannetjie. The back wheel starts hunting and swerving. [2013, Deon Meyer, Dirt Busters: A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking, Cape Town: Tafelberg, →ISBN:]
Nouns inflected like middelmannetjie
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
Borrowed from Afrikaans middelmannetjie (“little man in the middle”) (analysable as middel (“middle”) + man (“man”) + -etjie (“diminutive suffix”)), from Dutch middel (“middle”) + mannetje (“a short man”) (from man (“man”) + -etje, a variant of -tje (diminutive suffix)). See: Dutch Nouns '
middel'.