/ren'euh sahns", -zahns", -sahonns", ren"euh sahns', -zahns', -sahonns'/ ; esp. Brit. /ri nay"seuhns/ , n.
1. the activity, spirit, or time of the great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world.
2. the forms and treatments in art used during this period.
3. ( sometimes l.c. ) any similar revival in the world of art and learning.
4. ( l.c. ) a renewal of life, vigor, interest, etc.; rebirth; revival: a moral renaissance.
adj.
5. of, pertaining to, or suggestive of the European Renaissance of the 14th through the 17th centuries: Renaissance attitudes.
6. noting or pertaining to the group of architectural styles existing in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries as adaptations of ancient Roman architectural details or compositional forms to contemporary uses, characterized at first by the free and inventive use of isolated details, later by the more imitative use of whole orders and compositional arrangements, with great attention to the formulation of compositional rules after the precepts of Vitruvius and the precedents of existing ruins, and at all periods by an emphasis on symmetry, exact mathematical relationships between parts, and a general effect of simplicity and repose.
7. noting or pertaining to any of the various adaptations of this group of styles in foreign architecture characterized typically by the playful or grotesque use of isolated details in more or less traditional buildings.
8. noting or pertaining to the furnishings or decorations of the Renaissance, in which motifs of classical derivation frequently appear.
[ 1830-40; renaiss- (s. of renaistre to be born again renasci; re- RE- + nasci to be born) + -ance -ANCE ]
Syn. 4. resurgence, reawakening.