MEDIAEVAL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does mediaeval mean? 

• MEDIAEVAL (adjective)
  The adjective MEDIAEVAL has 2 senses:

1. relating to or belonging to the Middle Ages

2. as if belonging to the Middle Ages; old-fashioned and unenlightened

  Familiarity information: MEDIAEVAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MEDIAEVAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Relating to or belonging to the Middle Ages

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Synonyms:

mediaeval; medieval

Context example:

Medieval times

Pertainym:

Middle Ages (the period of history between classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance)

Sense 2

Meaning:

As if belonging to the Middle Ages; old-fashioned and unenlightened

Synonyms:

gothic; mediaeval; medieval

Context example:

a medieval attitude toward dating

Similar:

nonmodern (not modern; of or characteristic of an earlier time)

 Context examples 

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)