Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An act, trait, or custom characterized by ignorance or crudity.
- n. The use of words, forms, or expressions considered incorrect or unacceptable.
- n. A specific word, form, or expression so used.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. 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.
- n. A word or form so used; an expression not made in accordance with the proper usages of a language.
- n. An uncivilized state or condition; want of civilization; rudeness of life resulting from ignorance or want of culture.
- n. An act of barbarity; an outrage.
- n. Synonyms Barbarism, Solecism, etc. See impropriety.
- n. In anthropology, the conditions of barbarian society. See barbarian, a., 5.
Wiktionary
- n. A barbaric act.
- n. The condition of existing barbarically.
- n. An error in language use within a single word, such as a mispronunciation.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An uncivilized state or condition; rudeness of manners; ignorance of arts, learning, and literature; barbarousness.
- n. A barbarous, cruel, or brutal action; an outrage.
- n. An offense against purity of style or language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. See Solecism.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a brutal barbarous savage act
Etymologies
- Latin barbarismus, use of a foreign tongue or of one's own tongue amiss, barbarism, from Greek barbarismos, from barbarizein, to behave or speak like a barbarian, from barbaros, non-Greek, foreign (imitative of the sound of unintelligible speech). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“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”
“ROMANS: He says that George Bush and the United States government are engaged in what he calls barbarism in Iraq.”
“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.”
“Most religions began in barbarism and all have mostly grown up save one.”
“Answering crime with crime, or barbarism with barbarism, is neither in the definition nor even in the interest of States.”
“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
“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
“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.”
“Conan, representing barbarism, is either in conflict or competition with them.”
“The restless who will not follow any steady occupation - and this relic of barbarism is a great check to civilisation* – emigrate to newly-settled countries; where they prove useful pioneers.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘barbarism’.
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Rhetorical Devices
trope, wellerism, antimetabole, syncope, open-list, accismus, abating, abbaser, abecedarian, abcisio, ablatio, abominatio and 425 more...
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Hence
Words with definitions that have a "hence" in them.
hanger, Deet, tripe, spindlelegs, fiddle, store, pluck, snap, villain, link, comedy, particular and 410 more...
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-ism
denoting an action, result, or quality; denoting a system or principle; denoting a peculiarity in language; denoting a condition
alcoholism, Americanism, feminism, barbarism, exorcism, baptism, anachronism, tourism, cannibalism, capitalism, journalism, totalitarianism and 9 more...
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Phrases from British novels, between ...
lust legs and lip..., lawner, clettering, cletter, big business, pointless, feckless, aimless, graceless, something nasty i..., cold comfort, mollock and 61 more...
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kingofbash's Words
bash, poleaxed, salacious, libertine, charlatan, aplomb, fortuitous, finagle, apoplectic, debutante, carte blanche, aardvark and 472 more...
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ginnylev's Words
neuroplasticity, repudiate, scintilla, ruminate, tautology, ombudsman, exigent, filibuster, grace, ambidextrous, amends, disclosure and 623 more...
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words I like
brilliance, jujube, antichrist, existential, kibosh, royale, delicious, hobo, effervescence, mindshare, espionage, politico and 25 more...
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simple & useful8
sullied, mincing, portentous, barbarism, gesticulate, multiplicative, legerdemain, shibboleth, rekindling, ragamuffins, glacially, frothily and 63 more...
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g. 323
The autumn and winter winds and the lashing rain storms and the very cold of those seasons, for all their barbarism, were of a spleen that voiced the heart. Their passions were allied to human pas...
lashing rain, barbarism, human cries, slow pulp of summer, incurious yellow eye, spinning their cry
Tweets
Looking for tweets for barbarism.
gangerh 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. Oct 24, 2009
BrainyBabe "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. Dec 23, 2008
vanishedone 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.' Dec 5, 2008