See get medieval in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From get (“to become”) + medieval (“relating to medieval dungeon torture methods”); originally merely collocational when attested in the dialogue of the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, but the collocation took on the function of a phrasal verb, entering the lexicon as a term for torturing severely, after it went viral as a consequence of the film's popularity.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "gets medieval",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "getting medieval",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "got medieval",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "gotten medieval",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "got medieval",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "go medieval",
"tags": [
"alternative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "<gets,,got,gotten:got>"
},
"expansion": "get medieval (third-person singular simple present gets medieval, present participle getting medieval, simple past got medieval, past participle gotten medieval or got medieval)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"hyphenations": [
{
"parts": [
"get me",
"die",
"val"
]
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
242,
254
]
],
"ref": "1994, Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Pulp Fiction, spoken by Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), Miramax:",
"text": "What now? I'll tell you what now. I'm gonna call a couple of hard pipe hittin' niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow-torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy?! I ain't through with you by a damn sight! I'ma get medieval on your ass!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
2,
14
]
],
"ref": "2001, Zane, “Harlem Blues”, in The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the myth, Strebor Books, →ISBN, page 98:",
"text": "I got medieval on both their asses, packed all the shit I could possibly carry, and caught a cab to my sister's place near 135th and 5th Avenue in Harlem.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
202,
214
]
],
"ref": "2002, Edwardo Jackson, Ever After, Villard, →ISBN:",
"text": "“Check it out, god. Remember that night we stayed up all night, that Saturday night when your roommate was out bonin’ LaShonda? I brought the ‘Station up there and got in that ass three or fo’ times. I got medieval on you, muthafucka!”",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
109,
121
]
],
"ref": "2012, Baye McNeil, Hi! My name is Loco and I am a racist, Brooklyn, NY: Hunterfly Road Publishing, →ISBN, page 325:",
"text": "Doesn't it matter that members of the race you idolize were the ones that unleashed hell on your country and got medieval on innocent Japanese women and children not so long ago?",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To become sadistically torturous, especially due to vengeful spite."
],
"id": "en-get_medieval-en-verb-AJ6UnoVw",
"links": [
[
"become",
"become"
],
[
"sadistic",
"sadistic"
],
[
"torturous",
"torturous"
],
[
"vengeful",
"vengeful"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive, chiefly US, informal) To become sadistically torturous, especially due to vengeful spite."
],
"related": [
{
"sense": "sharing a semantic theme of going nuts violently",
"word": "go postal"
},
{
"sense": "sharing a semantic theme of going nuts violently",
"word": "run amok"
},
{
"sense": "sharing a semantic theme of going nuts violently; in one of its senses",
"tags": [
"also"
],
"word": "go ham"
},
{
"word": "on someone's ass"
}
],
"tags": [
"US",
"informal",
"intransitive"
],
"wikipedia": [
"Pulp Fiction"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡɛt ˌmɛd.iˈiː.vəl/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡɛt mɪdˈi.vəl/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
}
],
"word": "get medieval"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From get (“to become”) + medieval (“relating to medieval dungeon torture methods”); originally merely collocational when attested in the dialogue of the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, but the collocation took on the function of a phrasal verb, entering the lexicon as a term for torturing severely, after it went viral as a consequence of the film's popularity.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "gets medieval",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "getting medieval",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "got medieval",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "gotten medieval",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "got medieval",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "go medieval",
"tags": [
"alternative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "<gets,,got,gotten:got>"
},
"expansion": "get medieval (third-person singular simple present gets medieval, present participle getting medieval, simple past got medieval, past participle gotten medieval or got medieval)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"hyphenations": [
{
"parts": [
"get me",
"die",
"val"
]
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"sense": "sharing a semantic theme of going nuts violently",
"word": "go postal"
},
{
"sense": "sharing a semantic theme of going nuts violently",
"word": "run amok"
},
{
"sense": "sharing a semantic theme of going nuts violently; in one of its senses",
"tags": [
"also"
],
"word": "go ham"
},
{
"word": "on someone's ass"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English informal terms",
"English intransitive verbs",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
242,
254
]
],
"ref": "1994, Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Pulp Fiction, spoken by Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), Miramax:",
"text": "What now? I'll tell you what now. I'm gonna call a couple of hard pipe hittin' niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow-torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy?! I ain't through with you by a damn sight! I'ma get medieval on your ass!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
2,
14
]
],
"ref": "2001, Zane, “Harlem Blues”, in The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the myth, Strebor Books, →ISBN, page 98:",
"text": "I got medieval on both their asses, packed all the shit I could possibly carry, and caught a cab to my sister's place near 135th and 5th Avenue in Harlem.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
202,
214
]
],
"ref": "2002, Edwardo Jackson, Ever After, Villard, →ISBN:",
"text": "“Check it out, god. Remember that night we stayed up all night, that Saturday night when your roommate was out bonin’ LaShonda? I brought the ‘Station up there and got in that ass three or fo’ times. I got medieval on you, muthafucka!”",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
109,
121
]
],
"ref": "2012, Baye McNeil, Hi! My name is Loco and I am a racist, Brooklyn, NY: Hunterfly Road Publishing, →ISBN, page 325:",
"text": "Doesn't it matter that members of the race you idolize were the ones that unleashed hell on your country and got medieval on innocent Japanese women and children not so long ago?",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To become sadistically torturous, especially due to vengeful spite."
],
"links": [
[
"become",
"become"
],
[
"sadistic",
"sadistic"
],
[
"torturous",
"torturous"
],
[
"vengeful",
"vengeful"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive, chiefly US, informal) To become sadistically torturous, especially due to vengeful spite."
],
"tags": [
"US",
"informal",
"intransitive"
],
"wikipedia": [
"Pulp Fiction"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡɛt ˌmɛd.iˈiː.vəl/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡɛt mɪdˈi.vəl/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
}
],
"word": "get medieval"
}
Download raw JSONL data for get medieval meaning in English (3.8kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-12-02 using wiktextract (e2469cc and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.