Barbarian

How to spell barbarian

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce barbarian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does barbarian mean?

1. nounA person regarded as uncivilised, brutal, or belonging to a culture seen as primitive.
2. adjectiveRelating to or characteristic of a people regarded as uncivilised or savage.

Barbarian in a sentence

• noun

  The documentary described how the empire labelled every outsider a barbarian.

• adjective

  The novel was set during a barbarian invasion of the crumbling empire.

• noun

  He joked that anyone who skipped breakfast was a barbarian.

• adjective

  Critics called the prison conditions a barbarian relic of an earlier age.

Where does barbarian come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word goes back to the ancient Greek barbaros, which the Greeks used for anyone who did not speak Greek. The root is widely thought to be imitative: to Greek ears, foreign speech sounded like a meaningless 'bar-bar-bar', and that doubled syllable is the reason the modern spelling carries the repeated 'bar' at its heart. Latin borrowed the term as barbarus, broadening it to mean a foreigner and, later, an uncivilised or savage person, and from there it passed through Old French as barbarien. English took it up in the late 1400s, keeping the sense of an outsider beyond the bounds of one's own culture. Remembering that the word literally echoes the sound 'bar, bar' makes its tricky double appearance of those letters much easier to spell.

How the word is built

• barbar- (from Greek barbaros: foreign, non-Greek)
• -ian (noun/adjective suffix denoting a person or quality)