| 词组 | barbarian, barbaric, barbarous |
| 释义 | barbarian, barbaric, barbarous Although these words are well treated in books that discriminate synonyms from one another (such as Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms), a few usage books also venture to comment on them. Reader's Digest 1983 gives a number of examples of how the words are used, while Chambers 1985 and Bryson 1984 try to emphasize what they think the distinctions should be. Barbarian is primarily used as a noun. When used as an adjective, it usually means "of or relating to barbarians": • ... survives as a tribute to our barbarian ancestors —Times Literary Supp., 28 May 1971 • ... border troops were increasingly recruited in the later Empire from barbarian tribes —Weston La Barre, The Human Animal, 1954 • ... some thirty years after the barbarian penetration of Britain had been checked —F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2d ed., 1947 It is also used to suggest lack of refinement or culture: • ... attacked the romance for its confusion and lack of unity, considering it a barbarian invention unworthy of literature of classical stamp —Robert A. Hall, Jr., A Short History of Italian Literature, 1951 • ... had laid Newport open to the barbarian invasions of the new millionaires —Marcia Davenport, My Brother's Keeper, 1954 Barbaric is also used to mean "of or relating to barbarians": • ... specimens of graphic art found among extant barbaric folk —Edward Clodd, The Story of the Alphabet, 1900 • ... the advance of barbaric horsemen —Vivian J. Scheinmann, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 24 Oct. 1976 In anthropology it signifies a state between savagery and civilization: • Men may be considered to have risen into the next or barbaric state when they take to agriculture —Sir Edward B. Tylor, Anthropology, 1930 Barbaric is also used in a sense of "wild, primitive, uncultivated" that is not pejorative: • I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world —Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," 1855 • When Emerson does allude to artificial life, it is to find buried there the startling, strange, barbaric life of nature —Richard Poirier, A World Elsewhere, 1966 • ... produced the tangled, loose, barbaric magnificence of the Elizabethan drama —Marchette Chute, Ben Jonson of Westminster, quoted in Think, November 1953 • ... a barbaric quality that fits into the current mood of jewelry design —advt., N.Y. Times, 8 June 1981 But the wild and uncivilized has its negative side too: • ... installed himself in a pad at the Dorchester of such barbaric tastelessness that it must have been shipped piecemeal from Las Vegas —S. J. Perelman, New Yorker, 1 Jan. 1972 • He felt embattled, a guardian of high culture during the barbaric Eisenhower years —James Atlas, Atlantic, April 1982 Barbaric is also used to denote or suggest the cruelty and inhumanity that civilized people associate with barbarians: • ... intended to demonstrate that the human race is even more barbaric now than it was in 1431 —Wol-cott Gibbs, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 1951 • ... yet I knew the barbaric devil that lurked in his breast and belied all the softness and tenderness — Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904 • ... the first and second planetary wars have helped to make of this half century the most barbaric interval of the Christian era —Adlai E. Stevenson, Call to Greatness, 1954 • ... the barbaric treatment of Soviet prisoners of war —William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1960 Barbarous is sometimes used to mean "of or relating to barbarians": • Further, we find, that the Roman Legions here, were at length all recalled to help their Country against the Goths, and other barbarous Invaders —Jonathan Swift, "A Proposal for Correcting ... the English Tongue," 1712 • Caesar's short sketch of the Germans gives the impression of barbarous peoples They had not reached the agricultural stage, but were devoted to war and hunting —Henry O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, 4th ed., 1925 If often means simply "uncivilized": • Italic culture would have been quite barbarous had it remained untouched by Greek or Etruscan influences —C. A. Robinson, Jr., Saturday Rev., 1 May 1954 • ... Troy, which the narrow-minded Greeks called a barbarous city, though Helen found it, I dare say, far pleasanter than Sparta —George Santayana, Atlantic, April 1948 • Both were frontier states, less cultivated and hardier than the others, and regarded as barbarous and only half Chinese —A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology, rev. ed., 1948 It is also used to mean "harsh, cruel": • You have been wantonly attacked by a ruthless and barbarous aggressor —Sir Winston Churchill, The Unrelenting Struggle, 1942 • ... the barbarous conflicts between nations that call themselves Christian —Edmund Wilson, A Piece of My Mind, 1956 Barbarous is frequently used to suggest lack of culture and refinement: • ... the civilizing of the barbarous talk show —Karl E. Meyer, Saturday Rev., 15 Apr. 1978 • ... what a barbarous gut-rotting drink your German beer is —Robert Graves, I, Claudius, 1934 • ... the author may have a good deal of difficulty in persuading his publisher to give him a large enough advance to permit him to escape perhaps from this barbarous country to lodgings in Paris or Rome — Harrison Smith, Saturday Rev., 14 Nov. 1953 Barbarous has a special tendency to be applied to language. When it is not merely being used to express general disapproval, it means "full of barbarisms"—barbarisms being a diffuse class of words and expressions that offend in some way. For a discussion of these, see barbarism. • We breed barbarous Centaur-words such as quadra-phonics from Latin sires out of Greek dams —Howard 1980 • ... the usual scholarly biography, written in barbarous academese —Dwight Macdonald, New Yorker, 12 Mar. 1955 • ... when the language had been so refined, that Elizabethan poetry was commonly thought crude and barbarous —Charles C. Bell, PMLA, September 1947 • ... when he is at his worst Faulkner's style is barbarous—barbarous in its abundant solecisms, barbarous in its intolerable purple passages —Edward Wagenknecht, New Republic, 23 June 1952 • ... offensively elitist in its barbarous jargon —Terry Eagleton, TV. Y. Times Book Rev., 9 Dec. 1984 To summarize the evidence: barbaric and barbarous share most of their uses. They are even used in a weakened sense as generalized terms of disapproval: • ... the barbaric heat of late August —Time, 1 Dec. 1947 • ... the barbarous Midwestern climate —Mary McCarthy, New Yorker, 23 Mar. 1957 They differ chiefly in two uses: barbaric is often used in its nonpejorative "wild, primitive" sense in which barbarous is rare; and barbarous is used of language, while barbaric rarely is. Barbarian is still available as an adjective but is used less than either barbaric or barbarous. |
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