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History vocabulary · Periods and Eras

Renaissance

Meaning in history, with examples

/rɪˈneɪsns/nounCore term

In history, Renaissance means: The cultural movement in Europe from about the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, starting in Italy, marked by renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman learning and art.

In Turkish: Rönesans

How it is used

Written with a capital: the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance, Renaissance art. The word means 'rebirth' in French. With a small r, a renaissance is any revival, as in a renaissance of interest in local history.

Example sentences

  1. Florence was one of the main centres of the Renaissance.

  2. The course compares Renaissance Italy with the Ottoman court of the same period.

Common collocations

  • the Italian Renaissance
  • Renaissance art
  • Renaissance humanism
  • a Renaissance man
  • ReformationThe sixteenth-century religious movement in Western Europe that challenged the authority and practices of the Catholic Church and led to the founding of Protestant churches.
  • Middle AgesThe period of European history between the end of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and roughly the late fifteenth century.
  • early modernRelating to the period of roughly 1500 to 1800, between the Middle Ages and the modern age, marked by printing, global exploration, new states and early capitalism.
  • EnlightenmentThe European intellectual movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that stressed reason, science, individual rights and criticism of traditional authority.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Periods and Eras

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