less vs middlingly

less

adv
  • To a smaller extent or degree. 

  • Used for constructing syntactic diminutive comparatives of adjectives and adverbs. 

det
  • Fewer; a smaller number of. 

  • A smaller amount of; not as much. 

prep
  • Minus; not including 

conj
  • unless 

noun
  • A smaller amount or quantity. 

middlingly

adv
  • In a middling manner; averagely, moderately. 

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