dark agesn.

Brit.

/ˈdɑːk ˌeɪdʒᵻz/, U.S.

/ˈdɑrk ˌeɪdʒᵻz/

Forms:

α. 1500s darke ages, 1700s– dark ages.

β. 1600s darke age, 1900s– dark age.

Frequently with capital initials.

Origin: Formed within English, by compounding. Etymons: dark adj., age n.

Etymology: Partly (i, in α. forms) < dark adj. + the plural of age n., and partly (ii, in β. forms) < dark adj. + age n.In sense 2 after post-classical Latin saeculum obscurum, lit. ‘dark age’, ‘dark century’ (1602 in Caesar Baronius with specific reference to the period between the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and the genesis of the Gregorian Reform under Pope Clement II in 1046, regarded as a low point in the history of the Roman Catholic Church); conceptualization of the Middle Ages as in some respects metaphorically ‘dark’ in comparison with Antiquity has been traced to Petrarch in the 14th cent.

Chiefly with the.

1. Also in singular (dark age). A period characterized by ignorance, superstition, or repression; an unenlightened era.In early use not a fixed collocation.

ΚΠ

1584 J. Rainolds Six Concl. in J. Rainolds & J. Hart Summe of Conf. 731 All churches from the beginning of the world till the darke ages in which the Barbarians of late did ouerflow them.

1748 T. Smollett Roderick Random I. Pref. pp. iv–v In the dark ages of the world, when a man had rendered himself famous for wisdom or valour, his family..represented his character and person as sacred and supernatural.

1860 C. M. Yonge Hopes & Fears I. x. 370 What was natural science with the one, was natural history with the other. One went deep in systems and classifications, and thrust Linnæus into the dark ages; the other had observed, collected, and drawn specimens.

1991 R. Dawkins in Devil's Chaplain (2003) ii. 81 The theory that the Earth moves round the Sun..will be right in all future times even if flat-Earthism happens to become revived and universally accepted in some new dark age of human history.

2. The Medieval period in Europe; now esp. the early part of this period, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the high Middle Ages, c.500–1100 AD, so called because it has been considered a time of relative lack of intellectual and cultural enlightenment. Also occasionally in singular. Cf. the Middle Ages at middle age n. 2.The term Dark Ages was commonly used by 19th-century historians. However, as knowledge of the history and culture of the period increased, the negative connotations of the term began to be questioned; it is now more commonly used in popular rather than technical discourse. The term is now also frequently reconceptualized, as referring to a period for which historical evidence is relatively scant.

ΘΚΠ

the world > time > relative time > the past > historical period > [noun] > the Middle Ages

the Middle Ages1605

dark ages1656

mid-age1845

moyen-age1849

the world > time > relative time > the past > historical period > [noun] > other historical periods

antiquityc1375

Christian antiquity1577

the days of ignorance1652

the time of ignorance1652

dark ages1656

Lower Empire1668

the age of reason1792

Scythism1793

grand siècle1811

the Age of Enlightenment1825

the Hundred Days1827

Tom and Jerry days1840

regency1841

industrial age1843

Régence1845

viking age1847

ignorance1867

renascence1868

Renaissance1872

gilded age1874

jazz era1919

jazz age1920

post-war1934

steam age1941

postcolonialism1955

information age1960

1656 N. Stephens Plain Calculation Name & Number of Beast 261 Passing by the multitude of examples that might be given..we will come to a pregnant instance in the Tenth Century. This for the most part is called by Writers The dark age. Bellarmine and Baronius themselves do mourn over it, for the want of learning.

1730 A. Gordon tr. F. S. Maffei Compl. Hist. Anc. Amphitheatres 398 A Theatre..called so in the dark Ages, when such Names were given at random.

1837 H. Hallam Introd. Lit. Europe I. i. 5 Gregory I..the chief authority in the dark ages.

1887 Disciple (Cincinnati) Sept. 260 It was fortunate for modern civilization that the church converted barbarian Europe. It was the bond of union between the different nations during the Dark Age.

1943 F. M. Stenton Anglo-Saxon Eng. viii. 267 No other king of the Dark Ages ever set himself, like Alfred, to explore whatever in the literature of Christian antiquity might explain the problems of fate and free will.

2004 Church Times 8 Oct. 14/4 There was none of the usual implication that mid-14th century Europe was still held in the vice-like grip of the Dark Ages, with the populace floundering in..squalor.

3. In extended use (frequently humorous): an obscure period in the past, esp. understood as typifying a time of outdated attitudes, practices, technology, etc.

ΘΚΠ

the mind > mental capacity > knowledge > want of knowledge, ignorance > intellectual ignorance > [noun] > period of

midnight1593

dark ages1824

1824 Cobbett's Weekly Polit. Reg. 16 Oct. 144 In the ‘dark ages,’ when I was a boy, we used to have a great many holidays.

1834 M. Edgeworth Helen I. iv. 46 I must go back..quite to the dark ages, the time when I knew nothing of my daughter's character but by the accidental lights which you afforded me.

1876 F. Kilvert Diary 4 May (1944) 308 It was built in the Dark Ages of fifty years ago and was simply hideous.

1990 Managem. Computing Nov. 71 Printers are emerging from the Dark Ages of the daisywheel and dot-matrix, into the brave new world of the page printer.

2016 Liverpool Echo (Nexis) 3 Nov. 29 Can't you teach some of the football supporters who live in the dark ages to start acting like human beings, instead of homophobics?

4. Chiefly in singular (Dark Age). In Greece and other parts of the Aegean: the period between the collapse of Bronze Age civilization and the beginning of the Archaic Age, c.1100–750 BC.In quot. 1842 probably not a fixed collocation.

ΘΚΠ

the world > time > relative time > the past > historical period > [noun] > prehistoric periods

dark ages1842

Iron Age1845

iron period1847

stone period1849

lithic age1862

Aurignac1863

stone age1864

three ages1866

Palaeolithic1869

Middle Stone Age1870

prehistory1871

stone era1873

Siwalik1877

Neolithic1878

hemera1893

Mesvinian1909

Mesolithic1931

Abbevillian1937

Devensian1968

Creswellian1969

dryas1975

1842 J. Williams Homerus I. Introd. 12 Between this date and the traditionary era of the emigrations of the Ionians into Asia, supposed to have taken place one hundred and forty years after the fall of Troy, occurs a dark age, on which no light can be thrown.

1907 G. Murray Rise Greek Epic ii. 29 There lies between the prehistoric palaces of Crete, Troy, or Mycenae, and the civilization which we know as Greek a Dark Age covering at least several centuries.

1950 H. L. Lorimer Homer & Monuments viii. 461 Even in the Dark Age there must have been some degree of communication, as the common features of proto-Geometric culture show.

1960 Times Lit. Suppl. 22 Jan. 2/4 Hesiod..offers us priceless testimony..on the conditions and viewpoint of the common man during the latter part of the Greek Dark Ages.

1991 P. James et al. Cent. of Darkness (1992) xiii. 316 The Osmanaga core also shows that olive cultivation continued well after 1200 BC, indeed peaking around 950 BC—in the middle of the supposed Dark Age!

5. Astronomy. Chiefly in singular (dark age). A period in the early history of the universe in which no stars had formed and virtually all matter consisted of neutral hydrogen and helium atoms.The dark age, according to current theories, lasted roughly from 300,000 years to 150 million years after the Big Bang. It followed the epoch of recombination (see recombination n. 2a) and preceded reionization (reionization n. 2).

ΚΠ

1986 M. J. Rees Introd. Lect. in Proc. 119th Symp. IAU 1985 10 Cosmologists tell us that after the universe had expanded for about 10⁶ years, the fireball cooled down below 3000°, and the primaeval black body radiation shifted into the infrared. The universe then experienced a ‘dark age’ which persisted until the first bound systems formed.

2000 N.Y. Times 14 Jan. a20/4 After the dark age, which may have lasted one billion years or so, came the appearance of star-studded galaxies.

2008 J. Gribbin Galaxies: Very Short Introd. vi. 84 When they are able to look back even farther in time with the next generation of telescopes, they expect to see nothing at all—the so-called ‘dark age’.

Compounds

C1. As a modifier (in singular), with the sense ‘of or relating to the Dark Ages in Europe’ (see sense 2).

ΚΠ

1826 W. Cobbett Rural Rides in Cobbett's Weekly Polit. Reg. 7 Oct. 68 The ‘dark-age’ people were not so very foolish, when they had so many common-fields, and when almost every man that had a family had also a bit of land, either large or small.

1876 Grip (Toronto) 20 May A statement concerning ‘thumbscrews and boot-jacks’ being used in Dark Age tortures.

1953 K. Jackson Lang. & Hist. in Early Brit. 377 Dark-Age Latin.

1960 S. Cruden Sc. Abbeys 21 The massive circular stone wall of the ‘ring-fort’, of late Iron Age or Dark Age date.

2008 J. M. Luxford in M. Connolly & L. R. Mooney Design & Distribution Late Medieval Manuscripts in Eng. 179 The notion that print represented an enlightened contrast to ‘dark-age’ manuscript culture was current during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

C2. As a modifier (in singular), with the sense ‘of or relating to the Dark Age in the Aegean’ (see sense 4).

ΚΠ

1957 Amer. Jrnl. Archaeol. 61 197/1 For mainland Greeks who had lost their knowledge of writing the alphabet filled a serious vacuum and was therefore adopted at an earlier stage. Wace would help us all by pointing to a ‘Dark Age’ site where excavation could demonstrate the continuity of cultural tradition.

1959 Burlington Mag. Apr. 154/3 Some cultures are more homogeneous than others so far as the arts are concerned, and the position of Dark Age Greece in that respect is..far from clear.

1972 Gnomon 44 596 In spite of the apparent stylistic continuity of Dark Age pottery, Geometric art is acknowledged by the author to be a fusion between the old and the new.

2012 J. L. Bintliff Compl. Archaeology of Greece viii. 220/2 Several well-known Dark Age settlements show discontinuous settlement histories (Lefkandi, Zagora).

This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2021).

单词	dark ages
释义	dark agesn. Brit. /ˈdɑːk ˌeɪdʒᵻz/, U.S. /ˈdɑrk ˌeɪdʒᵻz/ Forms: α. 1500s darke ages, 1700s– dark ages. β. 1600s darke age, 1900s– dark age. Frequently with capital initials. Origin: Formed within English, by compounding. Etymons: dark adj., age n. Etymology: Partly (i, in α. forms) < dark adj. + the plural of age n., and partly (ii, in β. forms) < dark adj. + age n.In sense 2 after post-classical Latin saeculum obscurum, lit. ‘dark age’, ‘dark century’ (1602 in Caesar Baronius with specific reference to the period between the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and the genesis of the Gregorian Reform under Pope Clement II in 1046, regarded as a low point in the history of the Roman Catholic Church); conceptualization of the Middle Ages as in some respects metaphorically ‘dark’ in comparison with Antiquity has been traced to Petrarch in the 14th cent. Chiefly with the. 1. Also in singular (dark age). A period characterized by ignorance, superstition, or repression; an unenlightened era.In early use not a fixed collocation. ΚΠ 1584 J. Rainolds Six Concl. in J. Rainolds & J. Hart Summe of Conf. 731 All churches from the beginning of the world till the darke ages in which the Barbarians of late did ouerflow them. 1748 T. Smollett Roderick Random I. Pref. pp. iv–v In the dark ages of the world, when a man had rendered himself famous for wisdom or valour, his family..represented his character and person as sacred and supernatural. 1860 C. M. Yonge Hopes & Fears I. x. 370 What was natural science with the one, was natural history with the other. One went deep in systems and classifications, and thrust Linnæus into the dark ages; the other had observed, collected, and drawn specimens. 1991 R. Dawkins in Devil's Chaplain (2003) ii. 81 The theory that the Earth moves round the Sun..will be right in all future times even if flat-Earthism happens to become revived and universally accepted in some new dark age of human history. 2. The Medieval period in Europe; now esp. the early part of this period, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the high Middle Ages, c.500–1100 AD, so called because it has been considered a time of relative lack of intellectual and cultural enlightenment. Also occasionally in singular. Cf. the Middle Ages at middle age n. 2.The term Dark Ages was commonly used by 19th-century historians. However, as knowledge of the history and culture of the period increased, the negative connotations of the term began to be questioned; it is now more commonly used in popular rather than technical discourse. The term is now also frequently reconceptualized, as referring to a period for which historical evidence is relatively scant. ΘΚΠ the world > time > relative time > the past > historical period > [noun] > the Middle Ages the Middle Ages1605 dark ages1656 mid-age1845 moyen-age1849 the world > time > relative time > the past > historical period > [noun] > other historical periods antiquityc1375 Christian antiquity1577 the days of ignorance1652 the time of ignorance1652 dark ages1656 Lower Empire1668 the age of reason1792 Scythism1793 grand siècle1811 the Age of Enlightenment1825 the Hundred Days1827 Tom and Jerry days1840 regency1841 industrial age1843 Régence1845 viking age1847 ignorance1867 renascence1868 Renaissance1872 gilded age1874 jazz era1919 jazz age1920 post-war1934 steam age1941 postcolonialism1955 information age1960 1656 N. Stephens Plain Calculation Name & Number of Beast 261 Passing by the multitude of examples that might be given..we will come to a pregnant instance in the Tenth Century. This for the most part is called by Writers The dark age. Bellarmine and Baronius themselves do mourn over it, for the want of learning. 1730 A. Gordon tr. F. S. Maffei Compl. Hist. Anc. Amphitheatres 398 A Theatre..called so in the dark Ages, when such Names were given at random. 1837 H. Hallam Introd. Lit. Europe I. i. 5 Gregory I..the chief authority in the dark ages. 1887 Disciple (Cincinnati) Sept. 260 It was fortunate for modern civilization that the church converted barbarian Europe. It was the bond of union between the different nations during the Dark Age. 1943 F. M. Stenton Anglo-Saxon Eng. viii. 267 No other king of the Dark Ages ever set himself, like Alfred, to explore whatever in the literature of Christian antiquity might explain the problems of fate and free will. 2004 Church Times 8 Oct. 14/4 There was none of the usual implication that mid-14th century Europe was still held in the vice-like grip of the Dark Ages, with the populace floundering in..squalor. 3. In extended use (frequently humorous): an obscure period in the past, esp. understood as typifying a time of outdated attitudes, practices, technology, etc. ΘΚΠ the mind > mental capacity > knowledge > want of knowledge, ignorance > intellectual ignorance > [noun] > period of midnight1593 dark ages1824 1824 Cobbett's Weekly Polit. Reg. 16 Oct. 144 In the ‘dark ages,’ when I was a boy, we used to have a great many holidays. 1834 M. Edgeworth Helen I. iv. 46 I must go back..quite to the dark ages, the time when I knew nothing of my daughter's character but by the accidental lights which you afforded me. 1876 F. Kilvert Diary 4 May (1944) 308 It was built in the Dark Ages of fifty years ago and was simply hideous. 1990 Managem. Computing Nov. 71 Printers are emerging from the Dark Ages of the daisywheel and dot-matrix, into the brave new world of the page printer. 2016 Liverpool Echo (Nexis) 3 Nov. 29 Can't you teach some of the football supporters who live in the dark ages to start acting like human beings, instead of homophobics? 4. Chiefly in singular (Dark Age). In Greece and other parts of the Aegean: the period between the collapse of Bronze Age civilization and the beginning of the Archaic Age, c.1100–750 BC.In quot. 1842 probably not a fixed collocation. ΘΚΠ the world > time > relative time > the past > historical period > [noun] > prehistoric periods dark ages1842 Iron Age1845 iron period1847 stone period1849 lithic age1862 Aurignac1863 stone age1864 three ages1866 Palaeolithic1869 Middle Stone Age1870 prehistory1871 stone era1873 Siwalik1877 Neolithic1878 hemera1893 Mesvinian1909 Mesolithic1931 Abbevillian1937 Devensian1968 Creswellian1969 dryas1975 1842 J. Williams Homerus I. Introd. 12 Between this date and the traditionary era of the emigrations of the Ionians into Asia, supposed to have taken place one hundred and forty years after the fall of Troy, occurs a dark age, on which no light can be thrown. 1907 G. Murray Rise Greek Epic ii. 29 There lies between the prehistoric palaces of Crete, Troy, or Mycenae, and the civilization which we know as Greek a Dark Age covering at least several centuries. 1950 H. L. Lorimer Homer & Monuments viii. 461 Even in the Dark Age there must have been some degree of communication, as the common features of proto-Geometric culture show. 1960 Times Lit. Suppl. 22 Jan. 2/4 Hesiod..offers us priceless testimony..on the conditions and viewpoint of the common man during the latter part of the Greek Dark Ages. 1991 P. James et al. Cent. of Darkness (1992) xiii. 316 The Osmanaga core also shows that olive cultivation continued well after 1200 BC, indeed peaking around 950 BC—in the middle of the supposed Dark Age! 5. Astronomy. Chiefly in singular (dark age). A period in the early history of the universe in which no stars had formed and virtually all matter consisted of neutral hydrogen and helium atoms.The dark age, according to current theories, lasted roughly from 300,000 years to 150 million years after the Big Bang. It followed the epoch of recombination (see recombination n. 2a) and preceded reionization (reionization n. 2). ΚΠ 1986 M. J. Rees Introd. Lect. in Proc. 119th Symp. IAU 1985 10 Cosmologists tell us that after the universe had expanded for about 10⁶ years, the fireball cooled down below 3000°, and the primaeval black body radiation shifted into the infrared. The universe then experienced a ‘dark age’ which persisted until the first bound systems formed. 2000 N.Y. Times 14 Jan. a20/4 After the dark age, which may have lasted one billion years or so, came the appearance of star-studded galaxies. 2008 J. Gribbin Galaxies: Very Short Introd. vi. 84 When they are able to look back even farther in time with the next generation of telescopes, they expect to see nothing at all—the so-called ‘dark age’. Compounds C1. As a modifier (in singular), with the sense ‘of or relating to the Dark Ages in Europe’ (see sense 2). ΚΠ 1826 W. Cobbett Rural Rides in Cobbett's Weekly Polit. Reg. 7 Oct. 68 The ‘dark-age’ people were not so very foolish, when they had so many common-fields, and when almost every man that had a family had also a bit of land, either large or small. 1876 Grip (Toronto) 20 May A statement concerning ‘thumbscrews and boot-jacks’ being used in Dark Age tortures. 1953 K. Jackson Lang. & Hist. in Early Brit. 377 Dark-Age Latin. 1960 S. Cruden Sc. Abbeys 21 The massive circular stone wall of the ‘ring-fort’, of late Iron Age or Dark Age date. 2008 J. M. Luxford in M. Connolly & L. R. Mooney Design & Distribution Late Medieval Manuscripts in Eng. 179 The notion that print represented an enlightened contrast to ‘dark-age’ manuscript culture was current during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. C2. As a modifier (in singular), with the sense ‘of or relating to the Dark Age in the Aegean’ (see sense 4). ΚΠ 1957 Amer. Jrnl. Archaeol. 61 197/1 For mainland Greeks who had lost their knowledge of writing the alphabet filled a serious vacuum and was therefore adopted at an earlier stage. Wace would help us all by pointing to a ‘Dark Age’ site where excavation could demonstrate the continuity of cultural tradition. 1959 Burlington Mag. Apr. 154/3 Some cultures are more homogeneous than others so far as the arts are concerned, and the position of Dark Age Greece in that respect is..far from clear. 1972 Gnomon 44 596 In spite of the apparent stylistic continuity of Dark Age pottery, Geometric art is acknowledged by the author to be a fusion between the old and the new. 2012 J. L. Bintliff Compl. Archaeology of Greece viii. 220/2 Several well-known Dark Age settlements show discontinuous settlement histories (Lefkandi, Zagora). This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2021). < n.1584
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