Word.ws English Dictionary

Axial Age

Axial Age proper noun: the age from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE, during which broad changes in religious and philosophical thought occurred in a variety of locations.

Proper noun

Axial Age

  1. The age from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE, during which broad changes in religious and philosophical thought occurred in a variety of locations.
    • This rather speculative explanation of a most important characteristic feature of Axial Age civilizations might be questioned. But it remains a fact that these tensions and the social Freiraum existed in all these societies.1986, Hermann Kulke, “The Historical Background of India's Axial Age”, in Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, editor, The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations, State University of New York Press...
    • According to the philosopher Karl Jaspers, the Axial Age encompassed 800-200 B.C.E., with a center at approximately 500.²⁵ Jaspers used the epithet "Axial" because this epoch heralded fundamental and revolutionary changes in human social, religious, and intellectual history.1991, Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, Rodney Alan Werline, editors, Early Judaism and Its Literature (Seeking the Favor of God […] ), BRILL, →ISBN, page 102
    Synonyms:
    Axis Age

Synonyms of Axial Age

Origin of Axial Age

Calque of German Achsenzeit.

Questions about Axial Age

What does Axial Age mean?
Axial Age means the age from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE, during which broad changes in religious and philosophical thought occurred in a variety of locations.
What part of speech is Axial Age?
Axial Age is a proper noun.

Words near Axial Age in the dictionary

  1. axhead
  2. axheads
  3. axi-
  4. axi-symmetric
  5. axial
  6. Axial Age
  7. axial chirality
  8. axial lead
  9. axial leads
  10. axial lobe
  11. axial lobes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Axial Age (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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