barbarity
Americannoun
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barbarities
plural
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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
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
See Examples For:
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
“If we cannot stand up to call it what it is — a monstrous act of barbarity — then we have lost the plot.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2023
"What is missing to criminalize these people? And punish the clubs sportively? Why don't the sponsors charge La Liga? Don't the televisions bother to broadcast this barbarity every weekend?" he said.
From BBC ● May 22, 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
Indignant at this act of barbarity, Ketteler threw up his governmental position.
From The War Upon Religion Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-christianism in Europe by Francis A. (Francis Aloysius) Cunningham
Hudson, now 24, later apologised for the posts and called them "barbarities" and "dark humour".
From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2024
"Quino built the story with very human characters through the eyes of children, who say terrible barbarities with no filter," series director Lorena Munoz told Reuters.
From Reuters ● Sep. 26, 2023
Exceptions include the veteran British graphic artist Sue Coe, who finds focus for her classic Expressionism and her lifelong sorrow and anger at human barbarities.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 25, 2019
When we see people fighting against those barbarities, that is part and parcel of America too.
From Salon ● Nov. 3, 2019
The barbarities which followed make one think this Hohenzollern should have been in a madhouse instead of on a throne.
From A Short History of Germany by Mary Platt Parmele
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.
