Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • etc. See medieval, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or relating to the Middle Ages.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Alternative spelling of medieval.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective relating to or belonging to the Middle Ages
  • adjective as if belonging to the Middle Ages; old-fashioned and unenlightened

Etymologies

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Examples

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Comments

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  • I like it spelled like that. Not just with "ae" but with the ligature.

    January 15, 2008

  • (And yes, I'm a typography nerd.)

    January 15, 2008

  • Imagining frindley, newly refreshed from slumbering on a Posturepædic Mattress, trimming quills and breaking out the vellum in anticipation of firing up a fresh broadside against Wikipædia. Sadly, Brother Malachi, the retromingent reprobate, has being pissing in the madder-vats again, so the ink situation is looking a little dire ...

    Such are my insomniac musings.

    January 15, 2008

  • I thought I was, or knew, all the different types of nerds, but typography is a new one. It's good to have you aboard.

    January 16, 2008

  • Someone give sionnach a sleeping pill. ;-)

    January 16, 2008

  • Also a typography nerd: *raises hand*

    It's definitely one of the better kinds of nerds to be. ;-)

    January 16, 2008

  • It's funny how, in Italian, the correct term would be medioevale, with an o.

    April 4, 2008

  • Or would that be mediœvale?

    April 4, 2008

  • I don't think so, actually. I'm pretty sure Italian doesn't have diphthongs (of course, I might be wrong. For the first time in my life).

    April 4, 2008

  • Medioevale looks right to me. Of course there are Italian dipthongs, they just don't have any special treatment in the orthography.

    eg. bianco, viola, muore, etc.

    April 4, 2008

  • Yes, I meant typographical dipthongs. oops.

    April 4, 2008

  • I was just playing around – I think you're right that Italian doesn't make use of ligatures to represent diphthongs. And it looks as if Italian may have dropped the "o" anyway (at least in my Collins Pocket).

    Not sure I would describe the pairs of vowels in bianco and viola as diphthongs, as the letters belong to separate syllables. Diphthongs are the kinds of "moving" vowels that you get within a syllable, e.g. fair (eh-uh or ɛə), place (eh-ee or eɪ), tour (oo-uh or uə). As I understand it, Italian is a language of pure vowels (or is that just the musician-singer in me emerging?) and so never uses the diphthongs that you'll hear in English.

    These points taken together could lead to the conclusion that Italian orthography doesn't employ ligatures for diphthongs because phonetically the language doesn't feature diphthongs.

    April 4, 2008

  • I can't tell - I studied them during high school (Latin and Greek, that's the origin of my list).

    But I think we have some phonetic diphthongs: for example, boia should be disyllabic.

    Whooooooaaaaa I'm so late for work!

    April 4, 2008

  • Well, I could have cited zaino, buono,voi, neurologia, etc. Even bianco and viola are effectively dipthongs because the syllable break is bridged by the semi-consonant |j|. I suppose people can argue whatever they want but the commonly-held position of Italian linguists is that there are all kinds of dipthongs in Italian: ascending and descending, symmetrical and asymmetrical, etc.

    April 4, 2008

  • I must respectfully bow out of the discussion. While I know plenty about typography and something about linguistics and phonetics, I know zilch about Italian other than my exposure to musical Italian, which, of course, has very little with real Italian to do!

    April 5, 2008