longitudinal vs medial

longitudinal

adj
  • Relating to length, or to longitude. 

  • Running in the direction of the long axis of a body. 

  • Forward and/or backward, relative to some defined direction. 

  • Sampling data over time rather than merely once. 

noun
  • Any longitudinal piece, as in shipbuilding etc. 

  • A railway sleeper lying parallel with the rail. 

medial

adj
  • Closer to the addressee. 

  • Of or pertaining to the media and/or the areas of the wing next to it. 

  • Pertaining to the inside; closer to the median plane of the body or the midline of an organ. 

  • (of a speech sound) In the middle of a word. 

  • Of or pertaining to a mean or average. 

  • Pertaining to the middle layer of a blood vessel, to its tunica media. 

  • (of a consonant) Central: produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. 

noun
  • One or more letters that occur in the middle of a word. 

  • Any of various things that occur in the middle. 

How often have the words longitudinal and medial occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )