Word.ws English Dictionary

dark age

dark age noun: a time period characterized by ignorance, decline, stagnation, and/or conflict and turmoil.

Noun

dark age (plural dark ages)

  1. A time period characterized by ignorance, decline, stagnation, and/or conflict and turmoil.
    • It is not becoming in us to cast reproach upon those who lived in the daybreak of a dark age, for not seeing clearly all that we see in the more perfect day.1849, Jonathan Crane, A Historical Sketch of the Second Congregational Church in Attleborough, page 44
    • That, as then conceived of, was the Christ for that dark age, for men too carnal-minded to conceive of Him or have Him revealed to them in His higher, true character.1881, Edmund A. Beaman, Swedenborg and the New Age, page 183
  2. A time period about which there is very little information.
    • But if by a dark age you mean an age concerning which we are altogether in the dark ; and as , in applying this to our own , the Subject and Object , we and the age become identical and commutable terms ; I bid adieu to all reasoning by implication, to all legerdemain of inferential logic, and at...1884, The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Volume 4, page 441
    • By his summary treatment he suggests that, for him too, the period after the coming of the Dorians was a dark age, in the limited sense that he knew no more about it than anyone else.2017, A.M. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece

Proper noun capitalized: Dark Age

the Dark Age

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of Dark Ages.

Examples of dark age in a sentence

  • The dark age that I have alluded to is one that affected all Europe, and to-day the relics of this barbarous past rule all mankind.1890, The True Life: As Lived and Taught by Mary Hayes-Chynoweth, page 339:
  • The eighth century was the dark age in Greece ; after that , though learning revives, more of an effort is required to keep up the forms of ancient Greek scholarship.1904, William Paton Ker, The Dark Ages, page 343:
  • Newton's comparison of himself to a child on the seashore might be taken as evidence that the classical age of modern physics was a dark age and knew it.1927, Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford, Antiquity - Volume 1, page 438:
  • How would the "dark age" of plutocratic dominance come to an end if reformers remained withing the walls of the monasteries.1998, Richard J. Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left, page 64:

Forms of dark age

pluraldark ages
alternative formdarke age

Words formed from dark age

Questions about dark age

What does dark age mean?
Dark age means a time period characterized by ignorance, decline, stagnation, and/or conflict and turmoil.
How do you use dark age in a sentence?
The dark age that I have alluded to is one that affected all Europe, and to-day the relics of this barbarous past rule all mankind.
What part of speech is dark age?
Dark age can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of dark age?
The plural of dark age is dark ages.

Words near dark age in the dictionary

  1. dark
  2. dark academia
  3. dark academic
  4. dark academics
  5. dark advertising
  6. dark age
  7. dark ages
  8. Dark Alfs
  9. dark alternative
  10. dark alternative scenes
  11. dark ambient

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dark age (page history and authors); Dark 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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