Barbarous

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Barbarous \Bar"ba*rous\, a. [L. barbarus, Gr. ba`rbaros,
     strange, foreign; later, slavish, rude, ignorant; akin to L.
     balbus stammering, Skr. barbara stammering, outlandish. Cf.
     {Brave}, a.]
     1. Being in the state of a barbarian; uncivilized; rude;
        peopled with barbarians; as, a barbarous people; a


        barbarous country.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Foreign; adapted to a barbaric taste. [Obs.]
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Barbarous gold.                       --Dryden.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. Cruel; ferocious; inhuman; merciless.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              By their barbarous usage he died within a few days,
              to the grief of all that knew him.    --Clarendon.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     4. Contrary to the pure idioms of a language.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              A barbarous expression                --G. Campbell.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Syn: Uncivilized; unlettered; uncultivated; untutored;
          ignorant; merciless; brutal. See {Ferocious}.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  barbarous
       adj 1: (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict
              pain or suffering; "a barbarous crime"; "brutal
              beatings"; "cruel tortures"; "Stalin's roughshod
              treatment of the kulaks"; "a savage slap"; "vicious
              kicks" [syn: {brutal}, {cruel}, {fell}, {roughshod}, {savage},
               {vicious}]
       2: primitive in customs and culture

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  174 Moby Thesaurus words for "barbarous":
     Doric, Draconian, Gothic, Neanderthal, Philistine, Tartarean,
     alien, animal, anthropophagous, atrocious, backward, barbarian,
     barbaric, beastly, benighted, bestial, bloodthirsty, bloody,
     bloody-minded, bookless, brutal, brutalized, brute, brutish,
     cacophonous, cannibalistic, careless, clumsy, coarse, cretinous,
     crude, cruel, cruel-hearted, deceived, demoniac, demoniacal,
     devilish, diabolic, doggerel, dysphemistic, erroneous, exotic,
     exterior, external, extraneous, extraterrestrial, extrinsic,
     faulty, fell, feral, ferine, ferocious, fiendish, fiendlike,
     fierce, foreign, foreign-born, functionally illiterate, graceless,
     grammarless, gross, harsh, heathen, hellish, hoodwinked, ignorant,
     ill-bred, ill-educated, illiterate, impolite, imprecise, improper,
     impure, in bad taste, inconcinnate, inconcinnous, incorrect,
     indecorous, inelegant, infelicitous, infernal, inhuman, inhumane,
     intrusive, kill-crazy, led astray, loose, low, lowbrow, malign,
     malignant, merciless, misinformed, misinstructed, mistaught,
     murderous, noncivilized, nonintellectual, outland, outlandish,
     outside, pagan, philistine, pitiless, primitive, rough-and-ready,
     rude, ruthless, sadistic, sanguinary, sanguineous, satanic, savage,
     sharkish, slavering, slipshod, slovenly, solecistic, strange,
     subhuman, tameless, tasteless, troglodytic, truculent, ulterior,
     unbooked, unbookish, unbooklearned, unbriefed, unchristian,
     uncivil, uncivilized, uncombed, unconscionable, uncourtly, uncouth,
     uncultivated, uncultured, undignified, unearthly, unedified,
     uneducated, unerudite, uneuphonious, unfelicitous, ungentle,
     ungodly, ungraceful, ungrammatic, unguided, unholy, unhuman,
     uninstructed, unintellectual, unkempt, unlearned, unlettered,
     unlicked, unliterary, unpolished, unread, unrefined, unscholarly,
     unschooled, unseemly, unstudious, untamed, untaught, untutored,
     vicious, vulgar, wicked, wild, wolfish