However , in his day it would have been less so , for in English the word `` savage '' did not necessarily have the connotations of cruelty we now associate with it , but only gradually acquired them .
In French the term had been the `` Good Savage '' ( or good `` Wild man '' ) , and , in French ( and even in eighteenth-century English ) , the word `` savage '' did not necessarily have the connotations of cruelty we now associate with it , but meant `` wild '' as in a wild flower .