barbarize
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
-
to become barbarous; lapse into barbarism.
-
to use barbarisms in speaking or writing.
verb
-
to make or become barbarous
-
to use barbarisms in (language)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of barbarize
1635–45; partly < Greek barbarízein, equivalent to bárbar ( os ) barbarian + -izein -ize; partly barbar(ous) + -ize
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:
To his French and Arab friends, who look upon Americans as Roman-style imperialists come to organize and barbarize their cultivated Greek-style world, Childress is "the nice American," a surprisingly sensitive soul.
From Time Magazine Archive
The nobles were directed to converse in English, French, Italian, or their native tongue; Pombal declaring, that the custom of speaking Latin was only "to teach them to barbarize."
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 345, July, 1844 by Various
Manners are what vex or soothe, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us by a constant, steady, uniform, invincible operation like that of the air we breathe.
From Pushing to the Front by Marden, Orison Swett
Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.
From Many Thoughts of Many Minds A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age by Klopsch, Louis
The legions are barbarized and they barbarize the Emperor.
From Medieval People by Power, Eileen Edna
In rejecting Gnosticism, the Church in fact decided for genuine Hellenism against a corrupted and barbarized development of it.
From The Legacy of Greece Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield by Livingstone, R.W.
The room was a tatterdemalion rococo barbarized more completely by gothic embellishments that nevertheless gave it the atmosphere of the fantasts with whom Michael had identified it.
From Sinister Street, vol. 2 by MacKenzie, Compton
We shall be barbarized on both sides of the water, if we do not see one another now and then.
From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12) by Burke, Edmund
While the north of France was hopelessly barbarized by Teutonic inroads and long years of barbaric warfare, the civilization of Provence was rather checked than destroyed.
From Women of Mediæval France Woman: in all ages and in all countries Vol. 5 (of 10) by Butler, Pierce
Is the world to be barbarized again or not?
From The World Decision by Herrick, Robert
The Roman empire was barbarizing rapidly from the time of Trajan.
From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Webster, Noah
He objected to it as anti-social; he objected to it as making commerce the means of barbarizing instead of enlightening nations.
From The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style by Webster, Daniel
With these secret schools of physiological theology, the mythical poets were doubtless in connexion, and it was these schools which prevented polytheism from producing all its natural barbarizing effects.
From Literary Remains, Volume 2 by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
However, on the one hand, things are not always as they seem; commerce has its ennobling effects, direct or indirect; war its barbarizing degradations.
From Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 2 by De Quincey, Thomas
The ill habit … of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms.
From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Webster, Noah
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.
