English Dictionary

BARBARISM

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IPA (US): 

 Dictionary entry overview: What does barbarism mean? 

BARBARISM (noun)
  The noun BARBARISM has 1 sense:

1. a brutal barbarous savage actplay

  Familiarity information: BARBARISM used as a noun is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


BARBARISM (noun)


Sense 1

Meaning:

A brutal barbarous savage act

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

barbarism; barbarity; brutality; savagery

Hypernyms ("barbarism" is a kind of...):

atrocity; inhumanity (an act of atrocious cruelty)


 Context examples 


Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on—I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was croquant—(overlook the barbarism)—croquant chocolate comfits, and smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when in an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses, and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the 'voiture' I had given Celine.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was too horrible a confusion of guilt, too gross a complication of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter barbarism, to be capable of! yet her judgment told her it was so.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"New broom sweeps clean." (English proverb)

"A good friend is recognized in times of trouble" (Bulgarian proverb)

"Do not buy either the moon or the news, for in the end they will both come out." (Arabic proverb)

"He who has money and friends, turns his nose at justice." (Corsican proverb)



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