the.com/middle ages

means The period in European history from roughly the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, spanning about the 5th to 15th centuries.

from From Latin medium aevum, 'the middle age' — a term coined by Renaissance scholars who saw themselves as heirs to classical antiquity and cast everything between Rome's fall and their own 'rebirth' as a mere interval, a waiting room of history. The label stuck, carrying their bias with it: 'middle' implies a pause between two more important acts, and it's this condescension that later hardened into 'Dark Ages' — a phrase popularized still later by writers eager to contrast their own enlightenment with what they imagined as centuries of ignorance. Historians today largely reject that framing, but the name itself, born from someone else's sense of self-importance, never got the memo.