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Barbarous   /bˈɑrbərəs/   Listen
Barbarous

adjective
1.
(of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering.  Synonyms: brutal, cruel, fell, roughshod, savage, vicious.  "Brutal beatings" , "Cruel tortures" , "Stalin's roughshod treatment of the kulaks" , "A savage slap" , "Vicious kicks"
2.
Primitive in customs and culture.



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"Barbarous" Quotes from Famous Books



... wretch that he had not done us any injury as yet; that though he had been watching the camp, we could not tell that he had any sinister object in doing so; and that, as his life had been preserved, it would be barbarous to take it afterwards. ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston

... to engage in war against her sister States of the South; therefore she was first to be disarmed, and then to be made the victim of an invasion characterized by such barbarous atrocities as shame the civilization of the age. The wrongs she suffered, the brave efforts of her unarmed people to defend their hearthstones and their liberties against the desecration and destruction of both, form a melancholy ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... our pa'son says, 'tis a barbarous custom they keep up at Sidlinch, and ought to be done away wi'. The man a' old soldier, too. You see, our pa'son is not like ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of a witch—the talons of an eagle—the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage—a piece of work so barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape painters. For I will depart for once from my usual plan, of abstaining from all assertion of a thing's being beautiful or otherwise; ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... placed in that pew, upon the seat by their side, during the whole service. It may seem incredible, but it is true. Let us hope that the increased spirit of civilisation and humanity which abolished this frightful and degrading custom, may extend itself to other usages equally barbarous; usages which have not even the plea of utility in their defence, as every year's experience has shown them to be ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... impostor, who had neither title to govern, nor understanding to manage, but supplied that want with power, bloody and desperate councils, and craft, without conscience." How leniently had King Charles treated these barbarous regicides, coming in all mercy and love, cherishing them, preferring them, giving them employment in his service. As for King James, "as if mercy was the inherent quality of the family, he began his reign with unusual favour to them, nor could their joining with the Duke of Monmouth ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... upon such a disaster only for a sneer? Let me tell you, sir, it is not now a question about Jimmy Madison or Jimmy Armstrong. The pride and honor of the nation are wounded; the country is insulted and disgraced by this barbarous success, and every loyal citizen would feel the ignominy and be earnest to avenge it." There was an outburst of applause, and the sneerer was silenced. "I could not see the fellow," said Mr. Irving, in relating the anecdote, "but I let fly at him ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the spirit of an ecclesiastic. He was staggering along the last years of a life against which his own register[79] bears dreadful witness, and he would not burden his conscience with mercy to heretics. He would not mar the completeness of his barbarous career. He singled out three of the prisoners—Garret, Clark, and Ferrars[80]—and especially entreated that they should be punished. "They be three perilous men," he wrote to Wolsey, "and have been the occasion of the corruption of youth. They have ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... order the better to insure this resource, he purposed to marry an English woman; and the queen intended to have sent him Lady Anne Hastings; daughter of the earl of Huntingdon: but when the lady was informed of the barbarous manners of the country, she wisely declined purchasing an empire at the expense of her ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... could not operate upon the said eyes then and there, like the barbarous monsters in the stage-direction in King Lear. When her ladyship was going to tear out her daughter's eyes, she would retire smiling, with an arm round her dear child's waist, and then ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... knows everything. He told of Landor that one day, in a towering passion, he threw his cook out of the window, and then presently exclaimed, 'Good God, I never thought of those violets!' The last time he saw Landor he found him expatiating on our custom of eating in company, which he esteems very barbarous. He eats alone, with half-closed windows, because the light interferes with the taste. He has lately heard of some tribe in Crim Tartary who have the practice of eating alone, and these he extols as much superior to the English.... Macaulay is the king of diners-out. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... and cultivated. Their duty, had they hearkened to its promptings, would have been to employ towards the criminal plotters against Europe's civilized communities coercion of the same drastic description that once enabled mankind to substitute for the barbarous usages of savage tribes the habits of social relationship and moral self-surrender to the weal of all. Among the mainstays of Germany's type of society and the instruments by which it was built up are heavy artillery, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... felt ill at ease too. If this woman, this fury, had hit his wife in her sudden outburst of rage? But he could not help blaming himself: who had bade him have anything to do with such people? They were not a match for such barbarous folk. ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... and almost their children, such was the anxiety to make them orthodox. The patience of these peasants had run over; and now, in the hour of hope, they proposed the above sweeping measure. "The King was very far from granting them so barbarous a permission. He told them, 'They ought rather to conform to the Scripture precept, to bless those that cursed them, and pray for those that despitefully used them; such was the way to gain the Kingdom of Heaven.' The peasants," rolling dubious eyes for a moment, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... ladies are all so kind they make no sport, and I meet only with one that took me by doing a handsome thing of the kind. She was in a besieged town, and persuaded all those of her sex to go out with her to the enemy (which were a barbarous people) and die by their swords, that the provisions of the town might last the longer for such as were able to do service in defending it. But how angry was I to see him spoil this again by bringing out a letter this woman left behind her for the governor of the town, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... request, To be admitted as a guest, "Your hearing's bad!"—But why such fears? I speak to eyes, and not to ears; And for that reason wisely took The form you see me in, a book. Attack'd by slow devouring moths, By rage of barbarous Huns and Goths; By Bentley's notes, my deadliest foes, By Creech's[3] rhymes, and Dunster's[4] prose; I found my boasted wit and fire In their rude hands almost expire: Yet still they but in vain assail'd; For, had their violence prevail'd, And in a blast destroy'd my frame, They would have partly ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... thing could astonish M. de Chandore, it was the idea that there should exist in this world a man with a heart hard, cruel, and barbarous enough, to resist his Dionysia's prayers and tears, especially if they were backed by twenty thousand ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... nobleman, therefore naturally in his historical novels he describes the glorious deeds of the Polish nobility, who, being located on the frontier of such barbarous nations as Turks, Kozaks, Tartars, and Wolochs (to-day Roumania), had defended Europe for centuries from the invasions of barbarism and gave the time to Germany, France, and England to outstrip Poland in the development of material welfare ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,

... remarkably express the abundant mildness or good-nature which they possess; and are entirely free from that savage keenness which marks nations in a barbarous state. One would, indeed, be apt to fancy that they had been bred up under the severest restrictions, to acquire an aspect so settled, and such a command of their passions, as well as steadiness in conduct. But they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... Quesada, first mate of the steamship Mondragon, utterly overreached himself by sending in a report of a British hospital ship, sure to leave the harbour of Alexandria with gun-carriages upon her deck; how the report was proved to be a lie; how it was used as the excuse for the barbarous sinking of the great ships laden with wounded, and ablaze from stern to stern with green lights, the red cross glowing amidships like a wondrous jewel; how Christobal Quesada was removed from his ship in a French port, and after being duly arraigned for his life, met his ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... imperious lordship on the one hand, instinctive submission on the other. But even obedience—lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler—in itself implies some degree of voluntary connection. Even in barbarous states this is the case; it is not the isolated will of individuals that prevails; individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will is the essential bond of political union. This unity of the general and the particular is the Idea itself, manifesting itself as a State, and which subsequently ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... end to end of a liquefying universe, by a downpour which threatened to beat their sodden bodies to pulp, by all the connotation of terror that lay in the darkness and in their unguarded condition on a barbarous, semi-tropical coast. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... when slavery will be wiped from the earth, and when men will marvel that there ever was a time when men who called themselves civilized rushed upon each other like wild beasts and murdered one another, by methods so cruel and barbarous that they defy the power of language to describe. I can hear the shrieks of the soldiers of Europe in my dreams. I have imagination enough to see a battlefield. I can see it strewn with the wrecks of human beings, who but yesterday ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing

... only right to the advantages one has—education, taste, inherited traditions," said Imogen, willing to enlighten this charmingly civilized, yet spiritually barbarous, interlocutor who followed her, tall, in his delightfully outdoor-looking garments, his tie and the tilt of his Panama hat answering her nicest sense of fitness, and his handsome brown face, quizzical, yet very attentive, meeting ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... European, is a continuation of that change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous displayed during the previous evolution of the embryo, which every anatomist will admit; it follows that the parallel developmental process by which the like traits of the barbarous races have been turned into those of the civilized races, has also been a continuation of the change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The truth of the second position—that Mankind, as a whole, have become more heterogeneous—is ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... which had been formally promised to them by Anaxibius if they would cross over from Asia to Byzantium, the Cyreians thus found themselves sent away empty-handed to a long march—through another barbarous country, with chance-supplies to be obtained only by their own efforts,—and at the end of it a lot unknown and uncertain; while, had they remained in Asia, they would have had at any rate the rich satrapy of Pharnabazus ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... warnings and teachings of Nature Cure Philosophy have been verified, and had to be heeded and accepted by medical science. The exponents of Nature Cure protested against the barbarous practice of withholding water from patients burning in fever heat, and against the exclusion of fresh air from the sickroom by order of the doctor. The cold water and no drug treatment of typhoid fever, the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... dimly conscious that he was being flouted; but his anger was no less keen because of the measure of his ignorance. So he gave way to it, as does a tortured beast. He ground his great teeth together, raved, stamped, and swore in barbarous tongues and with barbarous imagery. Even Lady Arabella felt that it was well she was within reach of help, or he might have offered her brutal ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... of two days there came down to the shore quite one hundred and fifty Moors on foot, and thirty-five mounted on camels and horses, and though they seemed to be a race both barbarous and bestial, there was not wanting in them a certain sharpness, with which they could cheat their enemies, for at first there only appeared three of them on the beach, and the rest lay in ambush till our men should land and they could rush out and master them, which thing they could easily ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... with such terror-struck impressiveness, that their remote descendants of the present day have not even yet forgotten it. It appears in almost every mythology, and lives in the most distant countries, and among the most barbarous tribes. It was the laudable ambition of Humboldt,—first entertained at a very early period of life,—to penetrate into distant regions, unknown to the natives of Europe at the time, that he might acquaint himself, in fields of research altogether fresh and new, with ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... hearing— 260 Others with palms on high smote hurried strokes on the cymbal, Or from the polisht brass woke thin-toned tinkling music, While from the many there boomed and blared hoarse blast of the horn-trump, And with its horrid skirl loud shrilled the barbarous bag-pipe, Showing such varied forms, that richly-decorate couch-cloth 265 Folded in strait embrace the bedding drapery-veiled. This when the Thessalan youths had eyed with eager inspection Fulfilled, place they began to provide for venerate Godheads, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... pardon me: I have given most, if not all the Grammatical Terms in true old Saxon, from Aelfrick's Translation of Priscian, to shew the polite Men of our Age, that the Language of their Forefathers is neither so barren nor barbarous as they affirm, with equal Ignorance and Boldness. Since this is such an Instance of its Copiousness, as is not to be found in any of the polite modern Languages; and the Latin itself is beholden ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob

... it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch, Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves, Where manners ne'er were preach'd! Out of my sight! Be not offended, dear ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... dust almost at a breath. What we carry away from here must be in our memories. As far as mine is concerned, it is already charged with the knowledge that we have, here the remains of two races of people, the one fierce and barbarous, the other the civilised builders and carvers of this strange city of the past. Here it is, all written down, how, in spite of all their efforts for their protection, dwelling, as they must have been, in the midst of fierce and bloodthirsty tribes, they were attacked, conquered, and ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... that drummers, flute-players, bards, and singing men come from great distances to partake of the libations; and as the savage uproar lasts often for a week, it leads to every kind of dissolute practice in both sexes. Another custom, or repetition of this barbarous usage, frequently takes place seven years after the demise of persons of consequence, which is still more expensive than the former: as such are the baneful prejudices in favour of these habits, that families have too frequently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various

... them still smaller. Lastly, Humboldt thinks that the American Indians prefer colouring their bodies with red paint in order to exaggerate their natural tint; and until recently European women added to their naturally bright colours by rouge and white cosmetics; but it may be doubted whether barbarous nations have generally had any ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... slip of land, including the dense jungles along the Fish River, that had long been part of the colony; and made no other provision against the recurrence of a destructive invasion than a series of treaties with a number of barbarous chiefs, who had no regard for their engagements. This event is the most prominent feature in the correspondence of the emigrants; it is fairly recorded, and the language used is in general much more moderate than that employed by the English ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... over your cups, which were made for joy, is downright Thracian. Away with the barbarous custom, and protect modest Bacchus from bloody frays. How immensely disagreeable to wine and candles is the sabre of the Medes! O my companions, repress your wicked vociferations, and rest quietly on bended elbow. Would you have me also take my share of ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... both my hands and shakes 'em warmly for a long time and says do I think my cat can put the whole bunch on the blink?—or words to that effect. And I says it's the surest thing in the world; but why? And he says, then the sooner the better, because it's a barbarous sport and every last beetle ought to be thoroughly killed; and when they are, in case his mother don't find out the crooked work, mebbe he'll be let to raise orchids or do something useful in the world, instead of frittering his life away in the ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... were at least three of the party, that I saw it was catching water in a sieve to waste words on them, knowing as clearly as the sun serves the world, that interceding would be of no avail. However, I made a feint, and threatened to bowl away for a magistrate, if they would not desist from their barbarous and bloody purpose; but, i'fegs, I had better kept my counsel till it was ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... that Louis Trevelyan had broken up his establishment in Curzon Street, and had sent his wife away into a barbarous retirement in Dartmoor,—for such was the nature of the information on the subject which was spread among Trevelyan's friends in London;—and when he was made aware also that all this was done on his account,—because he was so closely intimate with Trevelyan's wife, and because ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... studied them. Their music was what is called "rag-time"—they had apparently found nothing better to do with their lives than to learn hundreds of verses and melodies, of which the subject-matter was the whims and moods of the half-tamed African race—their vanities and their barbarous impulses, and above all their hot and lustful passions. Song after song they poured forth, the substance of which was summed up in one line that Thyrsis happened ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... charming money, friend Delessert,' said Jean Souday; 'far more precious to an enlightened mind than the barbarous coin stamped with effigies of kings and queens of the ancien regime. It is very tempting; still, I do not think I can part with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... suddenly collapsed and he fell like a stone between the lines. The Germans turned their guns on the pile of wreckage where he lay, but French gunners ran out and brought his body in. His breast was all blown to pieces with an explosive bullet—criminal, of course, barbarous and uncivilized, but an ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... Mrs. Almayer had at least something tangible to cling to, but Nina, brought up under the Protestant wing of the proper Mrs. Vinck, had not even a little piece of brass to remind her of past teaching. And listening to the recital of those savage glories, those barbarous fights and savage feasting, to the story of deeds valorous, albeit somewhat bloodthirsty, where men of her mother's race shone far above the Orang Blanda, she felt herself irresistibly fascinated, and saw with vague surprise the narrow mantle of civilised morality, in which good-meaning people ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... Felix's fine cravat that he wanted in such a hurry to go to the play! Why, sir, they can't be gone to the play. Look at the cravat. Ah! upon my word I am afraid they are not at the play. No, sir, you may be sure that they are plotting with their barbarous gang at the alehouse; and they'll certainly break into the house to-night. We shall all be murdered in our beds, as sure as I'm a living woman, sir; but if you'll only take ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... utmost abhorrence of his bad morals, with equal, nay, with greater justice, must not the same be said of Homer? Nay, as it happens, he expresses in his own person a thing not usual with him, his disapprobation in the strongest terms, of Achilles's barbarous usage of Heistor's dead Body, that piece of cruelty which ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... admit anything against her husband. M'Kay was violent and unjust at times. His occupation he hated, and his restless repugnance to it frequently discharged itself indifferently upon everything which came in his way. His children often thought him almost barbarous, but in truth he did not actually see them when he was in one of these moods. What was really present with him, excluding everything else, was the sting of something more than usually repulsive of which they knew nothing. Mrs. M'Kay's answer to her children's remonstrances ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burned pig, father, only taste—O Lord"—with such like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... law herself was terrible enough in all conscience, but "Dale's Laws" went beyond. Offences ranged from failure to attend church and idleness to lese majeste. The penalties were gross—cruel whippings, imprisonments, barbarous puttings to death. The High Marshal held the unruly down ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... was at home in this barbarous dwelling. Not a single voice was heard during the burning, save the howling of the terrified ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... would of course be wholly uncertain, but all whom they named were seized, and, after a brief and very informal trial, all, or nearly all, were condemned to death. The sentence of death was executed on them in the most barbarous manner. A great column was erected in the market-place in Moscow, and fitted with iron spikes and hooks, which were made to project from it on every side, from top to bottom. The criminals were then brought out one by ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... my soul and body, what a barbarous country!" would be Lord Vincent's muttered comment. And the judge would smile and Claudia slumber, or ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... of a church consisting, as the early churches chiefly consisted, of what the world regard as the dregs of society—"the offscouring of all things." Nor was slavery at Colosse, it seems, supported by such barbarous usages, such horrid ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... which the Arickaras are noted. As soon as a horse was purchased, his tail was cropped, a sure mode of distinguishing him from the horses of the tribe; for the Indians disdain to practice this absurd, barbarous, and indecent mutilation, invented by some mean and vulgar mind, insensible to the merit and perfections of the animal. On the contrary, the Indian horses are suffered to remain in every respect the superb and beautiful animals which nature ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... Trajedy, something very moving in the Grief of Electra; but as Mr. D'Acier has observ'd, there is something very unnatural and shocking in the Manners he has given that Princess and Orestes in the latter Part. Orestes embrues his Hands in the Blood of his own Mother; and that barbarous Action is perform'd, tho' not immediately upon the Stage, yet so near, that the Audience hear Clytemnestra crying out to AEghystus for Help, and to her Son for Mercy: While Electra, her Daughter, ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe

... the conquest and extermination of weaker by more powerful peoples. The Greeks did not successfully resist the Persian invaders by any aid from their few mathematicians, but by military training, patriotism, and self-sacrifice. The barbarous conquerors of the East, Timurlane and Gengkhis Khan, did not owe their success to any superiority of intellect or of mathematical faculty in themselves or their followers. Even if the great conquests ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... expected the hour of his death. He died at length after a reign of fifty-six years, and the fortune of the Armenian monarchy expired with Tiridates. His lawful heir was driven into exile, the Christian priests were either murdered or expelled from their churches, the barbarous tribes of Albania were solicited to descend from their mountains; and two of the most powerful governors, usurping the ensigns or the powers of royalty, implored the assistance of Sapor, and opened the gates of their cities to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... the value of details, she saw that the sitting-room was furnished with the same deplorable taste which had selected the golden-oak hatrack and the assortment of ornamental walking-sticks. The woodwork had been stained to match the oak of the barbarous writing-table, which held a distorted bronze lamp, with the base composed of a heavily draped feminine figure, a massive desk set, also of bronze, a pile of newspapers, a dictionary, and several dull-looking books with worn covers and dog's eared pages. She noticed that the chairs ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... the beliefs and practices of savage and barbarous tribes, and turn to those of mighty empires. The gulf which lies between these two parts of our subject is obviously a wide one; and in many instances there is no bridge by which the student can pass from one to the other. Often it is a matter of inference rather ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... been twelve hundred years existent as an imaginative power on the earth, could do no better work than this, though with all the former power of Greece to help it; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stained its fleets in the seas of Greece with the blood of her people, but between barbarous imitations of the pillars which that ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... had posed as bandits, and as bandits they deserved to be treated. They had held up our own clergyman, of a nervous temperament, on a mountain pass, and had taken from him a part of his stipend. It was heartless. It was barbarous. It ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... now," said the commissary, with a knowing smile, "that will not do, Petit. You are far too old a hand to convey such a childish message as that. What reason can you have for seeking to shield these men who treated you in a barbarous way and left you to die a ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... sweeping change in sentiment. The Doomsmen were now the dominant race, and the Housemen had become their vassals. It was not good policy for a master to wantonly destroy productive property, and so by degrees these barbarous reprisals slackened. The time was now ripe for the second stage of the evolution—the introduction of the religious element and the final conversion of the execution into the sacrifice. That the transformation was a natural one ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... arched rotunda, which is common to all denominations, and from which branch off the various chapels belonging to each particular sect. In the Coptic chapel I saw one coal-black Copt, in blue robes, cowering in the little cabin, surrounded by dingy lamps, barbarous pictures, and cheap faded trumpery. In the Latin Church there was no service going on, only two fathers dusting the mouldy gewgaws along the brown walls, and laughing to one another. The gorgeous church of the Fire impostors, hard by, was always ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... please to eat?" she asked, with a lively glance at the size of my mouth: "that is always the first thing you people ask, in these barbarous places." ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... of expression, are never to be approved or valued, but according to their convenience, utility, or elegance. By this rule, some phrases that are not positively barbarous, may yet be ungrammatical, and a construction that is sometimes allowable, may yet be quite unworthy to be made or reckoned, "the common mode of expression." Thus, in Latin, the infinitive verb is occasionally put for a noun, and taken to signify a property possessed; as, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... anonymous author of the Description of the World (p. 14. in tom. iii. Geograph. Minor. Hudson) observes of Lucania, in his barbarous Latin, Regio optima, et ipsa omnibus habundans, et lardum multum foras. Proptor quod est in montibus, cujus aescam ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... bit of an impression on the Germans who have fled, and it has given a new energy to our troops, because the battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded. The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see francs-tireurs everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular army quite close to ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... period, mighty kingdoms will emerge from these wildernesses, and stately palaces and solemn temples, with gilded spires reaching the skies, supplant the Indian huts, whose only decorations are the barbarous trophies of ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... was superstitious and cruel at heart. Hyppolite was a Voodoo priest and, it is said, an anthropophagist. The people of the interior have an intense hatred for the white man, and still retain many of the barbarous customs of the ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... by William Ewart, a private member, who sat for Liverpool, but was supported by the highest legal authorities in the house of lords, including Lyndhurst himself, who openly recanted his former opinions, and declared the old law to be a barbarous survival, inconsistent with the practice of other civilised nations. In the same house an interesting debate took place on the management of jails, which had been placed under a system of inspection ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... that the German has an inexhaustible fund of reserve force. Certain national traits, certain legal institutions, could be followed back almost to the dawn of history, and it would be found that the Germans of the first centuries of our era were not nearly so barbarous as had been supposed. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... was invented, and mercilessly reduced to practice, by men whom the visions of Rousseau had fired, and who were not afraid nor ashamed to wade through oceans of blood to the promised land of humanity and fine feeling. We in our days have seen the same result of sentimental doctrine in the barbarous love of the battle-field, the retrograde passion for methods of repression, the contempt for human life, the impatience of orderly and peaceful solution. We begin with introspection and the eternities, and end in blood and iron. Again, Rousseau's first piece was an ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... the many folds that appear in the original I have reason to apprehend that it had been worn, and by some Englishmen, whom frequent sickness and the fond love of life had rendered weak and superstitious enough to try the effects of this barbarous and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... Messenger, who assisted and protected us at a critical point in the journey. I recall to mind a long succession of men in our employment as travelers, all equally remarkable for their dirty cloaks and their clean linen, for their highly civilized courtesy to women and their utterly barbarous cruelty to horses. Last, and most important of all, I see again, more clearly than I can see anything else, the one wretched bedroom of a squalid village inn in which we found our poor darling, prostrate between life and death, insensible to everything that ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... within a reasonable distance or within a reasonable time, they then were endowed by primitive law with the right to execute justice upon him themselves. Commonly the criminal was hanged (even for theft) when caught in the act, but barbarous punishments were not uncommon. That was legal procedure, provided the cry was raised, the pursuit undertaken, and the criminal caught within a reasonable number of hours or days as the case might be. The mob had the right to execute the law, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... attempt on the part of England, to acquire territory in America, seems to have been made until the year 1558. In this year letters patent were issued by Queen Elizabeth, empowering Sir Humphrey Gilbert to "discover and take possession of such remote, heathen, and barbarous lands, as were not actually possessed by any christian prince or people." Two expeditions, conducted by this gentleman terminated unfavorably. Nothing was done by him towards the accomplishment of the objects in view, more than the taking possession of the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... Death for him Had no more terror than his bed. He walked With wind and sunlight like a brother, glad Of their companionship and mutual aid. We, toilers after truth, are weaned too soon From earth's dark arms and naked barbarous breast. Too soon, too soon, we leave the golden feast, Fetter the dancing limbs and pluck the crown Of roses from the dreaming brow. We pass Our lives in most laborious idleness. For we have lost ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... "Miss Barbarous!" said Madge, aroused by the mere mention of the girl who, from the start, she had recognized, instinctively, as her real enemy. It had been thought of her, alone, which had made her bear the weary burden of the bundle on the long journey from the mountains. "I'd ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... the arms of those they love Would fain long linger in the joy thereof. But we, Orestes, have no respite yet For tears or tenderness. Let us forget All but the one word Freedom, calling us To live, not die by altars barbarous. Think not of joy in this great hour, nor lose Fortune's first hold. Not ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... "The barbarous tribes from the northern part of Europe at different times invaded the southern sections, conquering various other tribes, occupying their territory, and thus mingling with all the people from whom originated the present nations of Europe. Thus, in remote ages, the Scandinavians, among others, ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... to have died of the disease in 1715. It is also recorded, that in order to effect a cure, recourse was had to a barbarous superstitious custom, once unhappily common in Brazil, that of killing several fine healthy children, eating their hearts, livers, &c.; then washing in their blood, and annointing the body with grease made from the remains. Let us at least ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope

... king boasted, says a story, that he must be the most loyal man in the realm, as he had every day the regal throat at his mercy. The king was startled at the observation, and concluded that the barbarous idea could never have entered an honest head, and for the future he resolved to grow a beard as a precautionary measure ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... origin of the ethnic religions. Much, however, has been learned from observing the rites and beliefs of existing savage nations. Not a few religious notions and ceremonies, once in vogue among cultivated heathen peoples, may be plausibly considered a survival from a more remote and barbarous condition of society. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... about because Texas had adopted the suggestions of the Executive upon the subject of annexation, it could not passively have folded its arms and permitted a war, threatened to be accompanied by every act that could mark a barbarous age, to be waged against her because she ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... and children were driven from their own fire sides, and from lands that they had warrantee deeds of, houseless, friendless, and homeless (in the depth of winter,) to wander as exiles on the earth or to seek an asylum in a more genial clime, and among a less barbarous people. ...
— The Wentworth Letter • Joseph Smith

... by nature so curious and inquisitive, she might be found peeping—as if the chief distinction between superior and inferior minds was not this very disposition to inquire and investigate; as if, indeed, that which distinguishes the barbarous from the civilized, were not this very inquisitiveness and curiosity; the savage being satisfied with himself and averse to inquiry; the civilized ever on the alert, in proportion to his intelligence, and, like the Athenians, always on the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... They were harsh and barbarous words that he uttered, which no one understood, and they lasted a good paternoster long; after which, the priest ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... when the Jewish soul has been redeemed from the Galuth, can Judaism hope to resume its mission in the world." How significant the apposition in which the author places Judaism and the Jewish soul! What a pity to spoil a poetic insight of that kind by applying to it so barbarous a term as socio-psychological. Yet in that insight is echoed the modern conception of religion as the self-consciousness of the group, a conception which the very conditions of life have forced the Jew to adopt. Whatever ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... habitation. It is more ancient than the Earth, smaller, less massive. It has run more quickly through the phases of its evolution. Its astral life is more advanced, and its Humanity should be superior to our own, just as our successors a million years hence, for example, will be less coarse and barbarous than we are at present: the law of progress governs all the worlds, and, moreover, the physical constitution of the planet Mars is less ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... to those near him, "I am heartily glad. Let them come on and give us a chance of some real fighting. All this miserable sniping and lurking behind stones has been barbarous. People say that the Boers are patriotic and brave: let them act like soldiers ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... letter from the scholar as she was, or as she called herself: the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood, written in the strange barbarous French which she and many other fine ladies of that time—witness her Grace of Portsmouth—employed. Indeed, spelling was not an article of general commodity in the world then, and my Lord Marlborough's ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... collection of ballads.' It might be said also for a further plea that what one age regards as sport another condemns as butchery. The Ferrar family at Little Gidding were the inventors of 'pasting-printing,' as they called their barbarous mode of embellishment; and Charles I. himself, in Laud's presence, called their largest scrap-book 'the Emperor of all books,' and 'the incomparablest book this will be, as ever eye beheld.' The huge volume made ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... darkness came; and then, with the realisation of the fact that I was so much nearer to a hideous fate, the hours seemed suddenly to have sped with lightning swiftness. The excited buzz and bustle of preparation pervaded the town all day, and every day, while night again became a pandemonium of barbarous sounds—for the tom-tom and flageolet concerts had been resumed with tenfold virulence since my incarceration—and on one occasion a terrific uproar announced the arrival of the unhappy prisoners who ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... his musket, and touched his cap—"Pass on." Away we trundled, until, coming to a cross—road, we turned down towards the river; and at the angle we could see thick wreaths of smoke curling up into theair, showing that the barbarous order had been but too ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields 1698. To this play, besides the prologue, is prefixed a dialogue, which the author calls the prelude, managed by the poet, a critic, and one Mr. Peregrine the poet's friend. The author here seems to be under the same mistake with other modern writers, who are fond of barbarous and bloody stories. The Epilogue ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... (Miss M. E. H., Durham Centre, Ct.) encourages, thus she keeps up the desire to graduate, to demonstrate to the world "the equality of intellect in the races," that not color but the want of this proof in this semi-barbarous people is the obstacle to their being recognized as social equals. A tremendous task! Not so much to prove such an equality—for that had already been abundantly demonstrated—but rather to show the absurdity and impracticability of prejudice on account of color; ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... to know about what time boxes are needed. That boxes are needed at the proper season, I think I shall not need an argument to convince any one, in the present day. Bee-keepers have generally discarded the barbarous practice of killing the bees to obtain the honey. Many of them have learned that a good swarm will store sufficient honey for winter, besides several dollars worth as profit ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... Turks lost nearly all their European possessions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The subject peoples had kept their national traditions and customs and from time to time they aimed at independence. The Turkish rule was oppressive and at times its methods were barbarous. If there had been no jealousies among the great European powers, it is probable that Russia would have occupied Constantinople long ago. The other powers, fearing this might make Russia too strong, ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... of the most extraordinary dominion which has ever invaded and oppressed the world; the fall of that immense empire, erected on the ruins of so many kingdoms, republics, and states both barbarous and civilized; and forming in its turn, by its dismemberment, a multitude of states, republics, and kingdoms; the annihilation of the religion of Greece and Rome; the birth and the progress of the two new religions which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... they reported to be a city of some ninety-six thousand houses, and their experience of the people had been very favourable, especially with regard to receptivity of instruction. Xavier was weary of attempting to convert the Indians, whom he had found "barbarous, vicious, and without inclination to virtue," and his mind had been turned towards Japan by a message from a Japanese daimyo (whose identity and reasons for inviting him have never been explained), and by a personal appeal from a Japanese, whose ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... said the American, "it has always struck me as rather barbarous—this running away. I like to linger. But the ladies don't. They know that their dresses show off better in a parlour than under a boards of a mahogany table; perhaps their conversation, too, sounds better among arm-chairs and rugs. So we run after then, as we generally do; instead ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... he paw'd the ground, and snuff'd the gale! Uncropp'd his ears, undock'd his flowing tail; No blemish was within him, nor without him; Perfect he was in every part;— No barbarous Farrier, with infernal art, Had mutilated ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger

... chairs in his own hands, took up a position in which, without being obtrusively near, he was close enough to address Ruth if occasion should arise, as he was already fairly resolved it should. The three elders were most drolly provincial, to his mind, and their accent was positively barbarous to his ears. Reuben was less provincial to look at, but to Mr. De Blacquaire's critical eye the young man was evidently not a gentleman. He had not heard him speak as yet, but could well afford to make up his mind without that. Nobody but a boof could have employed Reuben's ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... God of Song was also the God of Light, and a moment's reflection reveals the true significance of this seemingly barbarous story. Apollo was pleased with his young rival, fixed him in position against an iron rest, (the tree of the fable,) and took a photograph, a sun-picture, of him. This thin film or skin of light and shade was absurdly interpreted as being the cutis, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... when the people on whom the government seeks to impose new institutions is composed of semi-barbarous tribes, without fixed laws, without solid traditions; that is to say, without a settled national mind. Such was the condition of Russia in the days of Peter the Great. We know how he sought to Europeanise the semi-Asiatic populations by ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... have. I say that I am on your side. Our civilization in this point has always been absurdly defective. Men have kept women at a barbarous stage of development, and then complain that they are barbarous. In the same way society does its best to create a criminal class, and then rages against the criminals. But, you see, I am one of the men, and an impatient one too. The mass of women I see about me are so contemptible that, in my ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... not being discovered by menaces and imprisonment, they fell upon the last resource, the naked bodies of the people. And here, my Lords, began such a scene of cruelties and tortures as I believe no history has ever presented to the indignation of the world,—such as I am sure, in the most barbarous ages, no politic tyranny, no fanatic persecution, has ever yet exceeded. Mr. Paterson, the commissioner appointed to inquire into the state of the country, makes his own apology and mine for opening this scene of horrors to you in the following words: "That ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... superior information of the whole population; presenting a moral picture exactly the reverse of that which too often characterises the now liberated ascripti glebae who are usually engaged in such occupations, and who are proverbially the most barbarous and ignorant class of the community of Scotland—thus furnishing an example, which is now become pretty general, of supplying an interesting and improving employment of the hours of relaxation from labour, instead of misspending the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... reached the green valleys, they came at length to a great lake, blue and beautiful to look upon, and here they sojourned for a while. It was a fair and pleasant land, but the people were rude and barbarous, and drove them away with stones when they would enter their hamlets. So, as they needed food, Hilary bade his companions gather berries and wild herbs, and he himself set snares for birds, and wove a net to cast into the lake, and made himself a raft of pine-trees, from ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... would have required no large exertion of editorial self-denial to have abstained from marring the pages with puns of which Punch would be ashamed, and with the vulgar affectation of patronage with which the sea captain of the nineteenth century condescends to criticize and approve of his half-barbarous precursor; but it must have been a defect in his heart, rather than in his understanding, which betrayed him into such an offence as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indians is the most gallant episode in the history of the New World. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... Xenophon makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,—the incarnation of sweetness and light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations, dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... individual so certain to be missed as the Father Tommaso? From his long residence at Damascus, and the nature of his calling, his absence was sure to be noticed. Why not have selected for their victim some more obscure individual, on whom their barbarous fanaticism might have exercised their impious rites with impunity? Bah! why waste time by pursuing the ridiculous absurdities of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... complexity of materials was gathered for one's delight; but honey seemed to take one back into an old and savage world. Samson had gathered it from the lion's bones, Jonathan had thrust his staff into the comb, and put the bright oozings to his lips; humanity in its most ancient and barbarous form had taken delight in this patiently manufactured confection. But a further thought came to him; the philosopher spoke of a development in nature, a slow moving upward through painfully gathered experience. It was ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... when men went abroad cased in steel, and, upon very slight provocation, were wont to smite each other with axes, and clubs, to buffet and skewer each other with spears, lances, swords, and divers other barbarous engines, yet, in that dark, and doughty age, ignorant though they were of all those smug maxims, and excellent moralities with which we are so happily blessed,—even in that unhallowed day, when the solemn tread of the policeman's foot was all unknown,—they ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol



Words linked to "Barbarous" :   noncivilized, noncivilised, inhumane



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