MIDDLE AGES

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Middle Ages mean? 

• MIDDLE AGES (noun)
  The noun MIDDLE AGES has 1 sense:

1. the period of history between classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance

  Familiarity information: MIDDLE AGES used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MIDDLE AGES (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The period of history between classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

Dark Ages; Middle Ages

Instance hypernyms:

age; historic period (an era of history having some distinctive feature)

Domain member category:

trivium ((Middle Ages) an introductory curriculum at a medieval university involving grammar and logic and rhetoric; considered to be a triple way to eloquence)

helot; serf; villein ((Middle Ages) a person who is bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord)

Iseult; Isolde ((Middle Ages) the bride of the king of Cornwall who (according to legend) fell in love with the king's nephew (Tristan) after they mistakenly drank a love potion that left them eternally in love with each other)

Tristan; Tristram ((Middle Ages) the nephew of the king of Cornwall who (according to legend) fell in love with his uncle's bride (Iseult) after they mistakenly drank a love potion that left them eternally in love with each other)

palatine; palsgrave ((Middle Ages) the lord of a palatinate who exercised sovereign powers over his lands)

esquire ((Middle Ages) an attendant and shield bearer to a knight; a candidate for knighthood)

Titania ((Middle Ages) the queen of the fairies in medieval folklore)

Oberson ((Middle Ages) the king of the fairies and husband of Titania in medieval folklore)

quadrivium ((Middle Ages) a higher division of the curriculum in a medieval university involving arithmetic and music and geometry and astronomy)

bloodletting (formerly used as a treatment to reduce excess blood (one of the four humors of medieval medicine))

knight errantry ((Middle Ages) the code of conduct observed by a knight errant who is wandering in search of deeds of chivalry)

courtly love ((Middle Ages) a highly conventionalized code of conduct for lovers)

Cockaigne ((Middle Ages) an imaginary land of luxury and idleness)

humor; humour ((Middle Ages) one of the four fluids in the body whose balance was believed to determine your emotional and physical state)

pavis; pavise ((Middle Ages) a large heavy oblong shield protecting the whole body; originally carried but sometimes set up in permanent position)

illumination; miniature (painting or drawing included in a book (especially in illuminated medieval manuscripts))

habergeon ((Middle Ages) a light sleeveless coat of chain mail worn under the hauberk)

chain armor; chain armour; chain mail; mail; ring armor; ring armour; ring mail ((Middle Ages) flexible armor made of interlinked metal rings)

cannon ((Middle Ages) a cylindrical piece of armor plate to protect the arm)

Holonyms ("Middle Ages" is a part of...):

history (the aggregate of past events)

 Context examples 

The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby—the music of the Middle Ages.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Intense hurricanes possibly more powerful than any storms New England has experienced in recorded history frequently pounded the region during the first millennium, from the peak of the Roman Empire to the height of the Middle Ages.

(Monster hurricanes struck U.S. Northeast during prehistoric periods of ocean warming, NSF)