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/fˈɪləstˌin/ Listen

noun

Philistine n.

A native or an inhabitant of ancient Philistia, a coast region of southern Palestine.

A bailiff. (Cant, Eng.) (Obs.)

A person deficient in liberal culture and refinement; one without appreciation of the nobler aspirations and sentiments of humanity; one whose scope is limited to selfish and material interests. (Recent)

adjective

Philistine adj.

Of or pertaining to the Philistines.

Uncultured; commonplace.

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Etymology of 'Philistine'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Philistine" Quotes from Famous Books

... maintained just now (and who does not feel a hard-hearted Philistine for gainsaying them?) that we have no right to ostracise, still less to stone, unwholesome kinds of art, make much of the fact that, as we are told in church, "We have no health in us." But it is the recognition of this lack of health which hardens my heart to unwholesome ...

— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... is very young,' he thought, thrilling. And youth was plastic—he, the sculptor, could surely mould her. Besides, was she not Sir Asher's daughter? She must surely have inherited some of his love for Palestine and his people. It was this Philistine set that had spoiled her. Julius, too, that young Oxford prig—he reflected illogically—had no ...

— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, ...

— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... attained one of their purposes, that of astonishing the bourgeois; yet if he condescended to ideas, his ideas on all subjects except art had less value than those of the philistine. Mademoiselle de Maupin has lost any pretensions it possessed to supereminent immorality; its sensuality is that of a dream of youth; such purity as it possesses, compared with books of acrid grossness, lies ...

— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... Schloss Johannisberg, the Steinberg Abbey above Hattenheim, are of course household words, and the man who said that travelling along the Rhine was like reading a restaurant wine-list had some justification for his Philistine speech. One does not expect to discover the real Steinberg Cabinet in a village inn, and the Johannisberg generally found in every hotel in Rhineland is a very inferior wine to that of the Schloss, and is grown in the vineyards round Dorf Johannisberg. I have ...

— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard

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