medieval

1. 1
   middle agesadjective

   Belonging to or characteristic of the Middle Ages, the period of European history from roughly 500 to 1500 AD.

   The manuscript dates from the medieval period and features ornate illustrations.

   Medieval towns often grew up around a central marketplace and a church.

   Note

   The name describes itself. It comes from French médiéval, which goes back to Latin medium, "middle," and aevum, "age," so the word is simply the Middle Ages turned into an adjective. It settles readily into time phrases such as medieval times and the medieval period, and into spans that run forward to now: genealogies traced from medieval times to the present.

2. 2
   brutaladjective

   Brutal: harshly violent in a way popularly associated with the Middle Ages.

   The dictator's prisons were notorious for their medieval cruelty.

   Fans described the boxer's final round as absolutely medieval.

   Similarbrutal, barbaric, savage, vicious

   Note

   A modern cartoon of the Middle Ages stands behind this sense, so the word condemns rather than dates. Its natural home is the phrase get medieval: about breaking into an apartment in New York Magazine in 1969, and on a person in Robert Ludlum's The Janson Directive, where it means blowtorch-and-pliers violence. Keep it apart from the historical meaning, which describes without passing judgment.

3. 3
   old-fashionedadjective

   Outdated or old-fashioned, as though belonging to a far earlier age.

   The company's medieval approach to record-keeping frustrated every new hire.

   Her relatives held medieval views about how young women should behave.

   Similarantiquated, archaic, outdated, old-fashioned, backward

   Oppositemodern, progressive

   Note

   Here the Middle Ages stop being a period and become an impression. The modern, popular picture of the era as backward gets applied to anything that seems hopelessly behind the times: a filing system, an attitude, a rule. It is a judgment, usually a disparaging one, and it implies nothing about actual dates. The same popular picture lies behind the "brutal" meaning.

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