We say a medium-sized pan/book/house, but medium height/amount/size.
But I came across an example in Cambridge Advanced learner's Dictionary: "Chop one medium carrot."
I wonder if we can use medium instead of medium-sized in the above examples, or it is just an exception.
Learn English – Medium or medium-sized
differencesmeaningsemanticsvocabulary
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Best Answer
We say "medium-weight" or medium-whatever when we need to distinguish just what is medium. If I said, "Bob is a medium person", what does that mean? He could be of medium height, medium intelligence, medium sorcery skill level, or many other factors. So I might say, "Bob is a medium-height person."
In context it might be obvious and therefore unnecessary to specify. "What size shirt does Bob where?" "Bob's a medium." "Is your boyfriend rich?" "Oh, he's about medium." Etc.
Sometimes people give additional information when it's not really necessary. If a recipe calls for "three medium carrots", it almost surely means medium size and not medium shade of orange or medium price at the grocery store. Nevertheless people will sometimes say "three medium-size carrots", perhaps just to be absolutely clear, perhaps to be consistent with other statements in the same document, or perhaps for no good reason.