What does barbarism mean?
Barbarism is a noun with two principal senses. Its dominant meaning today is extreme cruelty or brutality: acts of violence so savage they seem to belong to a pre-civilized age, such as the destruction of civilian populations or cultural monuments. In this sense it functions as a term of strong moral condemnation, common in political rhetoric, journalism, and historical writing about atrocities. A second, older sense belongs to linguistics and literary criticism: a barbarism is a word, phrase, or construction regarded as incorrect, unidiomatic, or foreign to the standards of a language — for example, a solecism introduced by careless writers. The word derives from the Greek 'barbaros', meaning one who does not speak Greek, passed through Latin into European languages, and entered English in the early seventeenth century. Because of its classical pedigree and its forceful connotations, barbarism remains a powerful rhetorical choice when writers wish to characterize conduct as utterly beyond the pale of civilization.
Extreme cruelty or brutality; a state of savagery or uncivilized behavior.
"Historians still recoil at the barbarism of the regime's death camps."
Typically formal and strongly condemnatory in register.
A word, phrase, spelling, or construction regarded as incorrect or unidiomatic in a language.
"Purists of the era dismissed the new compound as a barbarism imported from French."
This older linguistic sense survives mainly in scholarly and editorial writing.
The plural is standard and appears most often in the linguistic sense, where individual instances of incorrect usage are counted; in the moral sense it usually appears in phrases like 'acts of barbarism'.
"The editor circled several barbarisms in the manuscript before returning it."
The word we use to condemn cruelty was borrowed from the ancient Greeks — who used 'barbaros' to dismiss anyone who didn't speak their language.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of barbarism
Barbarism traces its origin to the ancient Greek 'barbaros', a term for foreigners whose speech sounded like unintelligible babbling to Greek ears, from which Greeks also derived 'barbarismos' for speech errors or foreign-sounding language. Latin adopted the word as 'barbarismus', preserving both the ethnic and linguistic meanings, and medieval and Renaissance scholars carried it into European languages as a label for ungrammatical usage. English acquired the word in the early seventeenth century, initially emphasizing the sense of corrupt or improper language, before the meaning broadened to encompass cruelty and uncivilized behavior generally. Cognates and relatives include 'barbarian', 'barbarous', and 'barbaric', all descended from the same Greek root.
Related word forms
How barbarism is actually used
In modern usage, 'barbarism' carries strong moral condemnation and is typically formal or rhetorical in register; 'barbarity' is often preferred for specific cruel acts. The linguistic sense — denoting an incorrect or unidiomatic usage — is now largely confined to scholarly and editorial contexts.
Easily confused with barbarism
Barbaric is an adjective describing something as brutal or uncivilized, while barbarism is a noun referring to the act or condition itself (or to a linguistic error).
Barbarity refers specifically to a cruel or savage act, whereas barbarism more broadly denotes the state of being uncivilized or, in linguistics, a nonstandard usage.