barbarize
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
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to become barbarous; lapse into barbarism.
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to use barbarisms in speaking or writing.
verb
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to make or become barbarous
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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 legions are barbarized and they barbarize the Emperor.
From Medieval People by Power, Eileen Edna
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
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
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
As a consequence of this, we are compelled to devote ourselves to raising tobacco and corn to go abroad, and our women and children are barbarized, while our lands are exhausted.
From The slave trade, domestic and foreign Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished by Carey, H. C. (Henry Charles)
Its use had to be learnt from French masters of deportment; the old magniloquent Italo-Spanish rapier jargon was forgotten; French terms, barbarized into carte, tierce, sagoon, flanquonade, and so forth, were alone understood.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 2 "Fairbanks, Erastus" to "Fens" by Various
Whither went the nine old Muses, daughters of Jupiter and the Goddess of Memory, after their seats on Helicon, Parnassus, and Olympus were barbarized?
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860 by Various
The absence of association forbids the existence of schools or workshops, books or instruction, and men become barbarized, when, under a different system, they might and would become civilized.
From The slave trade, domestic and foreign Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished by Carey, H. C. (Henry Charles)
Both this and the barbarized Latin schemes are fairly easy and certainly simpler than the real languages, but they are shocking to the ear, and produce the effect of mutilation of language.
From International Language Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar by Clark, Walter John
French is provincial Latin as spoken by the Franks, a Teutonic race; and, to a smaller extent, the same barbarizing has affected all other Roman dialects.
From Lectures on The Science of Language by Müller, Max
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
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
Can you point to a people in the world who have so long resisted the barbarizing influence of a base oppression?
From A Day's Ride A Life's Romance by Lever, Charles James
Nor is it merely probable that such a barbarizing process, such an adopting and sanctioning of a vulgarism, might take place, but among phonographers it already has taken place.
From English Past and Present by Palmer, Abram Smythe
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.
