barbarism
/ˈbɑːbərɪz(ə)m
/noun [mass noun]
1Absence of culture and civilization: the collapse of civilization and the return to barbarism...
- As the parties seeking to destroy modern civilization and return to barbarism have put anti-Semitism at the top of their programs, this civilization is apparently a creation of the Jews.
- There is an insightful section on the Bolsheviks' fear of hooliganism and their tendency to link disorder and barbarism with popular culture.
- And like past challenges to civilization, such barbarism thrives on Western appeasement and considers enlightened deference as weakness, if not decadence.
1.1 [count noun] A word or expression which is badly formed according to traditional philological rules, e.g. a word formed from elements of different languages, such as breathalyser (English and Greek) or television (Greek and Latin).Purism, however, also has its barbarisms, such as the quasiclassical plurals octopi and syllabi for octopus and syllabus, competing with octopuses and syllabuses....
- For instance, Fowler preferred Britishism to Briticism, labelling the latter a barbarism; Burchfield simply comments that Briticism is now the more usual term in scholarly work.
- It was printed in hard-to-read Gothic font, and is reproduced with all its original barbarisms, spellings and syntax.
2Extreme cruelty or brutality: she called the execution an act of barbarism...
- The history of mankind is littered with appalling acts of barbarism, cruelty and hatred.
- FROM 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power, till the death of Nazism in 1945, Germans unleashed a reign of terror, cruelty and barbarism hitherto unknown in the history of mankind.
- With equal firmness we should demand of the Arab governments and the Arab media their condemnation of barbarism, brutality and terrorism in their own communities.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French barbarisme, via Latin from Greek barbarismos, from barbarizein 'speak like a foreigner', from barbaros 'foreign'.