Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Barbarian
/bɑːrˈbɛəriən/noun
A person from outside a civilisation, or anyone behaving with brutal crudeness.
The Greek roots
βάρβαρος
bárbaros
non-Greek speaking, foreign
Literally: “one who says bar-bar”
Follow a root:βάρβαρος3 words
The story of the word
βάρβαρος began as mimicry: foreign speech sounded to Greek ears like bar-bar. It meant not-speaking-Greek long before it meant savage, and Herodotus applies it to Egyptians and Persians without much sneering. Contempt set in after the Persian Wars, Rome then used the word for everyone outside its frontier, and that is the sense English picked up in the 16th century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
barbaricbarbarismBarbary
In a sentence
He eats pizza with a knife and fork, like a barbarian.