barbarous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin barbarus (“strange, foreign, barbarous”),^[2][3][4][5] from Ancient Greek βάρβαρος (bárbaros, “non-Greek, foreign”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} with the English suffix -ous.^[2][6][5] The Greek word probably referred first to speech:^[2] Etymonline and Klein take it as imitating unintelligible speech, from Proto-Indo-European *barbar- or an imitative base,^[3][5] the OED and Skeat compare Latin balbus (“stammering”),^[2][7] and Ayto, Collins and Merriam-Webster mention a Sanskrit word meaning stammering, which Ayto calls related.^[8][9][10] Ayto adds that a Vulgar Latin alteration of the Latin word, Vulgar Latin *brabus, produced Italian bravo and so, through French, brave.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Etymonline dates the word to about 1400, meaning uncivilized, uncultured or ignorant,^[3] and the Shorter Oxford and Dictionary.com likewise put it in late Middle English.^[6][11] The OED's first record is later, from 1526, of language that is not Greek or Latin, and it says the shorter noun barbar was in use before it.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The Greek word first meant foreign or non-Hellenic and later outlandish, rude or brutal; the Romans used the Latin one for what was neither Latin nor Greek, then for peoples beyond the empire, whence uncivilized and later non-Christian.^[2] The OED notes that the classical senses occur in English mostly in translators and historians.^[2] Language was the first field in its record: from 1526 the word meant not classical or not standard,^[2][3] a use Merriam-Webster still gives first.^[10] The sense "uncivilized, wild" appears in the OED from 1538, of people, their manners and their customs,^[2] and it became the usual opposite of civilized.^[2] Cruelty is a later step: Etymonline dates it to the 1580s, and the OED's first record is Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus of 1594.^[3][2] Milton's use in 1667 for harsh, coarse sound comes from the speech of barbarians.^[2][6] Johnson (1755) listed uncivilized, ignorant of the arts, and cruel.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – uncivilized, uncultured, ignorant.^[3] The OED first records this sense in 1538.^[2]
• 1526 – of language, not classical or standard.^[2] Etymonline dates this use to about 1500.^[3]
• 1542 – of people, speaking a foreign language; non-Hellenic.^[2]
• 1594 – savagely cruel, in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.^[2]
• 1667 – harsh-sounding, coarsely noisy, in Milton's Paradise Lost.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Uncivilized or primitive in culture and customs.^[4][9][10]
2. Lacking refinement; coarse.^[4][9]
3. Extremely cruel or brutal: a barbarous sentence imposed on the prisoners.^[4][9][12]
4. Of language, full of barbarisms or not in the standard form.^[4][10][2]
5. Harsh-sounding or coarsely noisy.^[2][6]
6. (archaic) Speaking a foreign language; foreign, originally non-Greek.^[2][6]

Word family

• barbarously
• barbarousness
• hyperbarbarous
• nonbarbarous
• unbarbarous

Related words

• barbarian
• barbaric
• barbarism
• brave
• bravo

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.