Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The condition of having no civilizing influences or refined culture; ignorance or crudity.
- noun Savage violence or cruelty.
- noun The use of words, forms, or expressions considered incorrect or unacceptable.
- noun A specific word, form, or expression so used.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An offense against purity of style or language; originally, the mixing of foreign words and phrases in Latin or Greek; hence, the use of words or forms not made according to the accepted usages of a language: limited by some modern writers on rhetoric to an offense against the accepted rules of derivation or inflection, as hisn or hern for his or her, gooses for geese, goodest for best, pled for pleaded, proven for proved.
- noun A word or form so used; an expression not made in accordance with the proper usages of a language.
- noun An uncivilized state or condition; want of civilization; rudeness of life resulting from ignorance or want of culture.
- noun An act of barbarity; an outrage.
- noun Synonyms Barbarism, Solecism, etc. See
impropriety . - noun In anthropology, the conditions of barbarian society. See
barbarian , a., 5.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An uncivilized state or condition; rudeness of manners; ignorance of arts, learning, and literature; barbarousness.
- noun A barbarous, cruel, or brutal action; an outrage.
- noun An offense against purity of style or language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. See
Solecism .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
barbaric act. - noun The
condition ofexisting barbarically . - noun An error in language use within a single word, such as a
mispronunciation .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a brutal barbarous savage act
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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I use the term barbarism in contradistinction to civilization, and very respectfully refer to authorities of repute in justification of this use of the word, both to designate the quality of the _thing_, and the precise locality of its fittest application; for although
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ROMANS: He says that George Bush and the United States government are engaged in what he calls barbarism in Iraq.
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Most religions began in barbarism and all have mostly grown up save one.
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Answering crime with crime, or barbarism with barbarism, is neither in the definition nor even in the interest of States.
Bernard-Henri Lévy: And to Think That We Still Have to Argue Against the Death Penalty Bernard-Henri Lévy 2010
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Scarlet Plague, The (1912) The relapse of civilization into barbarism is a theme which, as those familiar with London's style will at once see, is admirably suited to his powers as a novelist.
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Such questions demand either simple and brutal answers (Yes, they should!) or an understanding that wars and other struggles must be historically differentiated — that participation may be an act of complicity in barbarism or an inevitability as occasioned by civil war, for example.
Arms and the Woman: Just Warriors and Greek Feminist Identity 2008
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The results of their barbarism is evident in the limited scope they are able to exercise it, but you are too blinded by your own mythology to put it in perspective.
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The results of their barbarism is evident in the limited scope they are able to exercise it, but you are too blinded by your own mythology to put it in perspective.
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Conan, representing barbarism, is either in conflict or competition with them.
Sharpe's Tower of the Elephant (part 2) zornhau 2007
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Will to power should not be confused with political power, which Nietzsche called barbarism (Kaufmann, "The Discovery of Will to Power," in Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays, pp. 232-242).
McCain Supporter Rants About "Hooligan" Obama And "Socialist" Takeover -- And McCain Agrees 2009
vanishedone commented on the word barbarism
To complement WeirdNet's fine collection of adjectives...
Eric Hobsbawm: 'I have called my lecture ‘Barbarism, A User’s Guide’, not because I wish to give you instructions in how to be barbarians. None of us, unfortunately, need it. Barbarism is not something like ice-dancing, a technique that has to be learned—at least not unless you wish to become a torturer or some other specialist in inhuman activities... The argument of this lecture is that, after about a hundred and fifty years of secular decline, barbarism has been on the increase for most of the twentieth century, and there is no sign that this increase is at an end. In this context I understand ‘barbarism’ to mean two things. First, the disruption and breakdown of the systems of rules and moral behaviour by which all societies regulate the relations among their members and, to a lesser extent, between their members and those of other societies. Second, I mean, more specifically, the reversal of what we may call the project of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, namely the establishment of a universal system of such rules and standards of moral behaviour, embodied in the institutions of states dedicated to the rational progress of humanity: to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, to Equality, Liberty and Fraternity or whatever.'
December 5, 2008
BrainyBabe commented on the word barbarism
"But how can that be? They come to delight their eyes with something beautiful," said Yashima, "and they leave it desecrated? That is barbarism." -- ''Yashima, or, The Gorgeous West'' by R T Sherwood, 1931.
December 24, 2008
gangerh commented on the word barbarism
For the Roman soldier Hadrian's Wall was more than just a defence against the Caledonian tribes - it also represented the dividing line between the known world of order and civilisation, and the unknown world of chaos and barbarism.
I didnt know what barbarism meant. It sounded like something to do with haircuts but that didnt sound right. The picture in the book showed the tribes with long messy hair and the Romans with short hair or helmets so maybe barbarism was to do with haircuts.
From 'The Dead Fathers Club' by Matt Haig.
October 24, 2009