barbarity
Americannoun
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brutal or inhuman conduct; cruelty.
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an act or instance of cruelty or inhumanity.
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crudity of style, taste, expression, etc.
noun
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the state or condition of being barbaric or barbarous
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a brutal or vicious act
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a crude or unsophisticated quality, style, expression, etc
Etymology
Origin of barbarity
Explanation
Barbarity is a vicious kind of cruelty. Deliberately inflicting terrible pain and suffering on other people is barbarity. While true barbarity reaches the level of torture, this noun is also used as an exaggerated way to say "an absence of civility or culture." Feet on the table at dinner? That's utter barbarity! Leaving your trash on the ground after a picnic? Total barbarity! "Want of civilization" is actually the original definition of barbarity — "savage cruelty" came about a hundred years later, in the 1680s.
Vocabulary lists containing barbarity
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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"Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife," Vocabulary from the literary criticism
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"The Iliad" by Homer, Book 22
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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.
GTA III in 2001 was a naughty revelation—a first-person, three-dimensional, open world of beauty and barbarity.
From Barron's • May 21, 2026
The sheer barbarity of these scenes may explain why they haven’t garnered more attention.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 29, 2024
Earlier Mr Macron visited the school and condemned the "barbarity of Islamist terrorism".
From BBC • Oct. 13, 2023
The Empire is ... crucially, subjects that go about their daily lives ignoring or enthusiastically supporting barbarity in the name of law and order, out of fear or simply for personal gain.
From Salon • Nov. 28, 2022
Its small heroine, Mary of the Angels, is an orphan, defrauded by a miser of her rich inheritance and treated with 193 barbarity by the uncle and aunt for whom she is an uncomplaining drudge.
From Spanish Highways and Byways by Bates, Katharine Lee
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.
