barbarity
Other forms: barbarities
Barbarity is a vicious kind of cruelty. Deliberately inflicting terrible pain and suffering on other people is barbarity.
While true barbarity reaches the level of torture, this noun is also used as an exaggerated way to say "an absence of civility or culture." Feet on the table at dinner? That's utter barbarity! Leaving your trash on the ground after a picnic? Total barbarity! "Want of civilization" is actually the original definition of barbarity — "savage cruelty" came about a hundred years later, in the 1680s.
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the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumanesynonyms: atrociousness, atrocity, barbarousness, heinousness
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a brutal barbarous savage act
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Vocabulary lists containing barbarity
Written by the influential abolitionist, Douglass's autobiography bears witness to the horrors of slavery.
As you read Francine Prose's "Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife," learn this word list. Here are links to lists for texts in Grade 8's Collection 5: The Diary of Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, After Auschwitz
Translated from the original Greek by Robert Fagles, this epic poem relates events from the Trojan War, including the exploits of Achilles.