Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Semibarbarian; half-civilized.
- noun A half-civilized person; a semibarbarian.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Half savage.
- noun One who is half savage.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun One who is
half savage .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The aristocratic families in Granada, his hometown, had never fully welcomed the man they regarded as a “semisavage Indian” into their exclusive circle.
Devil Dog David Talbot 2010
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He explained that alcohol is “a loathsome excretion of a living organism”; that it will make a civilized young man successively “become semicivilized, semisavage, savage, and, at last, below the brute”; that “nearly two-thirds of all the money in circulation in America in the course of a year” passed through the grasping hands of the liquor trust.
LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010
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He explained that alcohol is “a loathsome excretion of a living organism”; that it will make a civilized young man successively “become semicivilized, semisavage, savage, and, at last, below the brute”; that “nearly two-thirds of all the money in circulation in America in the course of a year” passed through the grasping hands of the liquor trust.
LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010
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These barbaric societies have their place and give vigor; but if unreduced later, as in many unsettled portions of this country, a semisavage state of society results.
Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene G. Stanley Hall 1885
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That there was but one better quality which pertained to her semisavage disposition -- the faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though not always an attribute of the noble savage -- Truth.
Selected Stories of Bret Harte Bret Harte 1869
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Jessica solves her problem by acquiring a huge, semisavage, red-eyed mastiff dog, which she keeps tied up and straining at the leash in a kennel between her own and her husband’s twin beds.
PEARL BUCK IN CHINA Hilary Spurling 2010
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Jessica solves her problem by acquiring a huge, semisavage, red-eyed mastiff dog, which she keeps tied up and straining at the leash in a kennel between her own and her husband’s twin beds.
PEARL BUCK IN CHINA Hilary Spurling 2010
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