barbarism
Americannoun
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a barbarous or uncivilized state or condition.
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a barbarous act; something belonging to or befitting a barbarous condition.
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the use in a language of forms or constructions felt by some to be undesirably alien to the established standards of the language.
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such a form or construction.
Some people consider “complected” as a barbarism.
noun
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a brutal, coarse, or ignorant act
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the condition of being backward, coarse, or ignorant
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a substandard or erroneously constructed or derived word or expression; solecism
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any act or object that offends against accepted taste
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of barbarism
1570–80; < Latin barbarismus < Greek barbarismós foreign way of speaking. See barbarous, -ism
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In Barbarism with a Human Face, for example, Bernard-Henri Levy demanded that French radicals confront the idea that Marxism was inherently corrupt.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant creature of the Enlightenment, once wrote, "Barbarism has . . . been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth."
From Time Magazine Archive
He also wrote, many years ago, a very interesting work, called "Civilization and Barbarism," giving an account of the reigns of some of those tyrants who so long arrested the great career of the Republic.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 by Various
Sumner's "Barbarism of Slavery" seemed tolerably graphic in its time, but how tamely it reads beside the "New Orleans Delta"!
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 by Various
Barbarism itself has not been able to efface the strong primeval impression.
From The God-Idea of the Ancients or Sex in Religion by Gamble, Eliza Burt
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
