mezzanine

Etymology

PIE word *médʰyos The noun is borrowed from French mezzanine, and from its etymon 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’). The adjective and verb are derived from the noun.

noun

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.
      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. 21 November 2019, 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 2022-07-11
      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 December 2020, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire: Bauer Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 68
   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.

adj

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.
   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. 2020, Katharina Pistor, chapter 4, in The Code of Capital[…], Princeton University Press
2. (engineering) Fulfilling an intermediate or secondary function.
   To make interconnections easier, we added a mezzanine PCB.

verb

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