midding is the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering but not quite in it — blissfully invisible yet still fully included, with all the thrill of being there and none of the burden of having to be.
The word is an invention, not an inheritance. It was coined by John Koenig for 📝The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a project that supplies names for feelings English has left unnamed, and it is given there as an intransitive verb — something a person is doing at the edge of a party, rather than a state a person is in. No standard dictionary carries it, and the project's own entry is the only source for it. Koenig's note derives the coinage from Middle English midden, a refuse heap kept near a dwelling: a thing sited just outside the house it belongs to.
Its precision comes from what it excludes. Midding is not solitude, which requires the others to be absent; the gathering has to be there, audible, going on without you. It is not loneliness or exclusion either, because nothing is being withheld — the perimeter is chosen, and the person on it could step in at any moment and elects not to. What the word isolates is the specific comfort of proximity without participation: the reassurance that everyone is together and everyone is okay, received from a few feet outside the circle.
"feeling the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering but not quite in it—hovering on the perimeter of a campfire, chatting outside a party while others dance inside, resting your head in the backseat of a car listening to your friends chatting up front—feeling blissfully invisible yet still fully included, safe in the knowledge that everyone is together and everyone is okay, with all the thrill of being there without the burden of having to be." ~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows