Savage

How to spell savage

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce savage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does savage mean?

1. adjectiveFierce, violent, or cruel in nature or manner.
2. verbTo attack ferociously, or to criticise someone or something very harshly.

Savage in a sentence

• adjective

  The boxer landed a savage blow in the final round.

• verb

  The critics will savage any film that wastes such a strong cast.

• adjective

  The report contained a savage critique of the company's management.

• verb

  A loose dog can savage livestock if it gets into the field.

Where does savage come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Savage traces back to the Latin silva, meaning 'wood' or 'forest', which gave rise to the adjective silvaticus, literally 'belonging to the woods'. In Late Latin this softened into salvaticus, and the idea of something living out in the untamed forest naturally drifted toward the sense of 'wild' and 'undomesticated'. Old French carried it as sauvage or salvage, and English borrowed it around the year 1300 to describe wild animals and wild, uncultivated places before it came to mean fierce or brutal behaviour. The very same silva root survives in the names Sylvia and Sylvester and in the word 'silviculture', the growing of trees. The unstressed second syllable, which sounds like a plain '-ij', is the spelling trap: it ends in -age, not -idge or -edge.

How the word is built

• sav- (from Latin silva: wood, forest, hence wild)
• -age (noun/adjective suffix)