barbarian

UK/bɑː(ɹ)ˈbɛə.ɹi.ən/US/bɑɹˈbɛəɹ.i.ən/

nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,228 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: barbarians

A barbarian is somebody seen as uncivilised and savage. Barbarian hordes, called them barbarians, a barbarian invasion.

It says more about the speaker than the described: to the Greeks a barbarian was simply anybody who did not speak Greek, and the word imitates how foreign speech sounded to them. Rome's barbarians included peoples with cities, laws and long histories.

Definitions of barbarian

1nounbarbarianSomebody seen as uncivilised and savage.B2
“The Romans called the tribes beyond their borders barbarians.”

barbarian is a term for an outsider.

Where it comes from

Greek barbaros meant anybody not speaking Greek, apparently imitating unintelligible speech as bar-bar. Latin took it as barbarus and the sense hardened into savagery.

Ancient Greek
βάρβαρος — foreign, non-Greek, strange
Latin
barbaria — foreign country
Medieval Latin
barbarinus — Berber, pagan, foreigner
Middle English
barbarian
English, today
barbarian

Built from

barbarus · Latin — foreigner, savage

From Middle English barbarian, borrowed from Medieval Latin barbarinus (“Berber, pagan, foreigner”), from Latin barbaria (“foreign country”), from barbarus (“foreigner, savage”), from Ancient Greek βάρβαρος (“foreign, non-Greek, strange”), possibly onomatopoeic (mimicking foreign languages, akin to English blah blah). Cognate to Sanskrit बर्बर (“barbarian, non-Aryan, stammering, blockhead”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

barbarian in the wild

As central power broke down in the Western Roman Empire, the Roman military became more important but was dominated by men of barbarian origin.
Migration Period
The fall of the Western Roman Empire, although it involved the establishment of competing barbarian kingdoms, was to some extent managed by the Eastern emperors.
Migration Period
The barbarian is a playable character class in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.
Barbarian (Dungeons & Dragons)
The barbarian kingdoms were the principal governments in Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages.
Barbarian kingdoms
The barbarian realms only transitioned into proper territorial kingdoms after the collapse of effective Western Roman central authority.
Barbarian kingdoms

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

← Vocabulary