middle ages

See also: Middle Ages

English

Proper noun

the middle ages

1. Alternative letter-case form of Middle Ages
   • 1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter V, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, pages 187–188:

     “As we have,” he said, "in the course of this our toilsome journey, lost our meridian,* indulgence shall be given to those of our attendants who shall, from very weariness, be unable to attend the duty at prime, and this by way of misericord or indulgentia.” […] * The hour of repose at noon, which, in the middle ages, was employed in slumber, and which the monastic rules of nocturnal vigils rendered necessary.

   • 1864, “The “Courts of Love” in Provence”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume LVI, London: Chapman and Hall, translation of Les Cours d’Amour, les Comtesses et Châtelaines de Provence by [Jean-Baptiste] Capefigue, page 392:

     Courts of love, hawking, hunting, cavalcades, were the pastime of the châtelaines of the middle ages.

   • 1893 July, W. Gilmore Ellis, “The Amok of the Malays”, in D. Hack Tuke, Geo. H. Savage, editors, The Journal of Mental Science, volume XXXIX, number 166 (new series, 130), part 1, “Original Articles”, London: J. and A. Churchill, […], page 325:

     For the convenience of this paper I shall call the man who runs Amok an “Amoker,” and the crime “Amoking.” / It is necessary to state at once that I do not in any way intend to discuss the point as to whether the judicial execution of men Amoking is right or wrong, or as to whether execution of all Amokers would tend to lessen the frequency of the crime. I believe Penang has claimed that the Chief Justice’s (Sir Wm. Norris) sentence, which reads like one of those of the middle ages, and which I will give in detail later on, passed upon an Amoker, and carried out within eight days of the Amok in 1846, was the means of stamping out Amok entirely for years, but I can obtain no reliable information in proof of this.

   • 1936, Harold J[oseph] Laski, “The Background”, in The Rise of European Liberalism: An Essay in Interpretation, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, page 20:

     Whereas in the middle ages the idea of acquiring wealth was limited by a body of moral rules imposed under the sanction of religious authority, after 1500 those rules, and the institutions, habits, and ideas to which they had given birth, were no longer deemed adequate. They were felt as constraint. They were evaded, criticized, abandoned, because it was felt that they interfered with the exploitation of the means of production.

   • 1951 February, Forrest H. Howard, “The Physiologic Position for Delivery”, in Northwest Medicine, volume 50, number 2, Portland, Ore.: Northwest Medical Publishing Association, page 98:

     And lastly, obstetrical chairs seemed most natural to the accoucheurs of the middle ages.

   • 2012 March 2, James Ball, “Not my kingdom for a horse: an equine political history”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Moving into the middle ages, William the Conqueror managed to rout the English and rule the country, then see off numerous plots and assassination attempts, before his horse did for him in a nasty fall, killing him at 60.