middle-age

English

Alternative forms

• middleage

Adjective

middle-age (not comparable)

1. (quasi-adjective) attributive form of Middle Ages
   • 1840, Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc., volume V, page 31:

     With the same precaution that they would have consorted with the evil spirits of middle-age romance.

   • 1853, Ruskin, Lect. Archit., chapter iv, page 217:

     That child is working in the middle-age spirit — the other in the modern spirit.

   • 1869, F. W. Newman, Misc., page 46:

     Perhaps it incapacitated the Arabs and the middleage Schoolmen for all but formal reasoning.

Further reading

• James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Middle age, sb.”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volume VI, Part 2 (M–N), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 421, column 2: “3. attrib., quasi-adj. (with hyphen). Belonging to the Middle Ages; mediæval.”