| Library / English Dictionary |
BARBAROUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Primitive in customs and culture
Classified under:
Similar:
noncivilised; noncivilized (not having a high state of culture and social development)
Sense 2
Meaning:
(of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering
Example:
vicious kicks
Synonyms:
barbarous; brutal; cruel; fell; roughshod; savage; vicious
Classified under:
Similar:
inhumane (lacking and reflecting lack of pity or compassion)
Derivation:
barbarousness (the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane)
Context examples:
They sang some rude chorus right tunefully as they walked, but their English was so coarse and rough that to the ears of a cloister-bred man it sounded like a foreign and barbarous tongue.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
My answer was, that we were overstocked with books of travels: that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted some authors less consulted truth, than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers; that my story could contain little beside common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees, birds, and other animals; or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I remembered too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I might hereafter think it right to pursue, that for the present I would remain quietly in my hovel, watching and endeavouring to discover the motives which influenced their actions.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
My only concern is, that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my master’s arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our barbarous English.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
If a prince sends forces into a nation, where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown; barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous become civilized.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
