ZebraWords.com - The Definition of 'Barbarous', Synonyms of 'Barbarous' & More on 'Barbarous'

1. WordNet® 3.0 (2006)

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: barbarous, brutal, cruel, fell,
           roughshod, savage, vicious]
    2: primitive in customs and culture

2. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

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]

Thesaurus Results for barbarous:

1. Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

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

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