Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who willfully or maliciously defaces or destroys public or private property.
  • noun A member of a Germanic people that overran Gaul, Spain, and northern Africa in the fourth and fifth centuries AD and sacked Rome in 455.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One of a Germanic race who first appeared in middle and southern Germany, and in the first half of the fifth century ravaged Gaul, Spain, northern Africa, etc., and in 455 Rome itself, with enormous damage to accumulated treasures of art and literature.
  • noun [lowercase] One who wilfully or ignorantly destroys or disfigures any work of art, literature, or the like; one who is hostile to or wantonly attacks anything that is beautiful or venerable.
  • Of or pertaining to a vandal or vandalism.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the Vandals; resembling the Vandals in barbarism and destructiveness.
  • noun (Anc. Hist.) One of a Teutonic race, formerly dwelling on the south shore of the Baltic, the most barbarous and fierce of the northern nations that plundered Rome in the 5th century, notorious for destroying the monuments of art and literature.
  • noun Hence, one who willfully destroys or defaces any work of art or literature, or anything valluable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A member of an ancient east Germanic tribe famous for sacking Rome.
  • adjective Of or relating to the Vandals.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who willfully destroys or defaces property
  • noun a member of the Germanic people who overran Gaul and Spain and North Africa and sacked Rome in 455

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin Vandalus, Vandal, probably of Germanic origin.]

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Examples

  • The 52-yarder was the longest of his career and eighth longest in Vandal history.

    USATODAY.com 2008

  • Mr. Vandal is a director of the Conference Board of Canada.

    Hydro-Quebec's Results 2005, Perspectives 2006 2006

  • The Vandal was a nosy, pushy cuss, never shy about crossing boundaries: He attempts to investigate the secrets of the harems; he views the rock where Paul was let down in a basket, and seriously asks where the basket is.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • The Vandal could be a philistine but you had to admire his candor.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • The Vandal could be a philistine but you had to admire his candor.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • The Vandal was the ancestor of George F. Babbitt and Alden Pyle; the emerging face of America, as it appeared to the larger world, and also as it appeared in the mirror.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • The Vandal was the ancestor of George F. Babbitt and Alden Pyle; the emerging face of America, as it appeared to the larger world, and also as it appeared in the mirror.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • The Vandal was a nosy, pushy cuss, never shy about crossing boundaries: He attempts to investigate the secrets of the harems; he views the rock where Paul was let down in a basket, and seriously asks where the basket is.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • But the vengeance which called the Vandal from his forest to crush the Roman empire, and after hewing down the Colossus which, for seven hundred years, had bestrode the world, moulded kingdoms out of its fragments, was of a totally different order from that which ruled over our great day of Change.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 Various

  • Rome under the care of Stilicho, who was by birth a Vandal, that is to say, of one of those Teutonic nations who were living all round the northern bounds of the empire, and whose sons came to serve in the Roman armies and learn Roman habits.

    Young Folks' History of Rome Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

Comments

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  • used as a first name by the marvelous villain/antihero, Vandal Savage.

    April 5, 2013