middle age, n.
1. The period between youth and old age. Cf. middle eld, middle life: see middle a. 6.
| 1377 Langl. P. Pl. B. xii. 7 And of thi wylde wantounesse tho thow ȝonge were, To amende it in thi myddel age. c 1440 Ipomydon 1588 He had an eme was stiffe and stronge; Of mydille age. 1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 13 b, Some in theyr youth: some in theyr myddell age: and some in theyr last dayes. c 1600 Shakes. Sonn. vii, Resembling strong youth in his middle age. a 1631 Donne in Select. (1840) 24 That all thy spring, thy youth, be spent in wantonness, all thy summer, thy middle age, in ambition. 1749 Fielding Tom Jones ii. viii, His time of life, which was only what is called middle age. 1810 Scott Lady of L. i. xxi, On his bold visage middle age Had slightly press'd its signet sage. 1884 Pae Eustace 37 He was considerably past middle age. |
2. the Middle Age, now usually
the Middle Ages: the period intermediate between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ times; in earlier use commonly taken as extending from
c 500 to
c 1500; now used without precise definition, but most frequently with reference to the four centuries after a.d. 1000.
Cf. mod.L.
medium ævum, G.
mittelalter, F.
moyen âge.
| α sing. 1621 Donne Sermon I Tim. 1. 15 (1661) 192 It is a perplex't question in the School, (and truly the Balance in those of the middle age, very even) whether if Adam had not sinned, the son of God had come into the world, and taken our nature and our flesh upon him. 1624 Wotton Elem. Archit. sig. ¶ 4 After the reuiuing and repolishing of good Literature, (which the combustions and tumults of the middle Age had vnciuillized). 1753 Chambers Cycl. Supp. s.v. Age, Middle Age denotes the space of time commencing from Constantine, and ending at the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in the fifteenth century. a 1780 Harris Philol. Inquiries i. (1781) Addr. to E. Hooper, An Essay on the Taste and Literature of the middle Age. 1882 J. C. Morison Macaulay 70 His acquaintance with the Middle Age generally, may without injustice be pronounced slight. |
| β pl. 1616 Spelman De non temerandis Ecclesiis (ed. 2) App. 194 Thus the eldest and newest Expositors are wholly for mee, many also (& of the best of them) of the middle ages. 1699 M. Lister Journey to Paris 108 It would have been some satisfaction to have seen by the Pictures, what the middle Ages, at least, had thought of them [sc. animals]. 1722 Mem. Literature VI. 296 Mr. Juncker,..has published in the German Language an Excellent Introduction to the Geography of the middle Ages. 1819 Hallam Mid. Ages. (ed. 2) III. i. ix. 304 The Middle Ages, according to the division I have adopted, comprize about one thousand years, from the invasion of France by Clovis to that of Naples by Charles VIII. 1842 Brande Dict. Sci. etc., Middle ages... The centuries between the ninth or tenth and the end of the fifteenth after Christ are generally comprehended under this loose denomination. 1887 J. C. Morison Service of Man 177 The great hollow which is roughly called the Middle Ages, extending from the fifth to the fifteenth century. |
3. attrib., quasi-adj. (with hyphen). Belonging to the Middle Ages; mediæval. Also
attrib. in sense 1, as
middle-age bulge,
middle age spread (
cf. next, sense b).
| 1840 Gen. P. Thompson Exerc. V. 31 With the same precaution that they would have consorted with the evil spirits of middle-age romance. 1853 Ruskin Lect. Archit. iv. 217 That child is working in the middle-age spirit—the other in the modern spirit. 1869 F. W. Newman Misc. 46 Perhaps it incapacitated the Arabs and the middleage Schoolmen for all but formal reasoning. 1937 John o' London's 29 Jan. 742/1 (Advt.), Join the happy throng who have learnt to control the ‘middle-age spread’ by wearing the..supporting belt. 1963 Times 6 May 9/1 The butcher wants his beef before it has developed a middle-age spread. 1972 J. Porter Meddler & her Murder iii. 46 She was fighting a losing battle against the middle-age bulge. |