barbarity
/bɑːˈbarɪti
/noun (plural barbarities) [mass noun]
1Extreme cruelty or brutality: the barbarity displayed by the terrorists [count noun]: the barbarities of war...
- Ghastly and horrendous as it was, the sustained massacres, barbarities and cruelties committed on the Hindus that lasted off and on for almost a millennium were of an even larger magnitude.
- Many regarded the cruelties and barbarities of communist regimes as inherent in communism.
- At a time when the world is numbed with barbarities and deceits, Fanon, with his passionate anger, needs to be rediscovered.
Synonyms
brutality, brutalism, cruelty, bestiality, barbarism, barbarousness, savagery, viciousness, fierceness, ferocity, wickedness, nastiness, ruthlessness, remorselessness, mercilessness, villainy, murderousness, heinousness, nefariousness, monstrousness, baseness, vileness, inhumanity, blackness, fiendishness, black-heartedness, hellishness, ghastliness, horror
atrocity, act of brutality, act of savagery, evil, crime, outrage, offence, abomination, obscenity, enormity, wrong
2Absence of culture and civilization: beyond the Empire lay barbarity...
- They believe there is a war between right and wrong, faith and falsehood, civilisation and barbarity and that all tactics are justified in the last-ditch struggle to defend what they believe in.
- Without the culture of the Public Service, there will only be barbarity in this place.
- Culturally, Constance Garnett helped to dispel the image of barbarity with her translations of Tolstoy and other leading Russian writers.
Synonyms
heathendom, barbarianism, barbarism, barbarousness, primitiveness, wildness;
philistinism, benightedness, unsophisticatedness, lack of civilization
archaic rudeness
