page_title: Barbarian
section_title: Semantics
hierarchical_section_title: Barbarian / Etymology / Semantics
caption_attribution_description: English: Plate 17 from Philip Clüver's Germania Antiqua (1616)
context_page_description: A barbarian is a human who is perceived to be either uncivilized or primitive. The designation is usually applied as a generalization based on a popular stereotype; barbarians can be members of any nation judged by some to be less civilized or orderly but may also be part of a certain "primitive" cultural group or social class both within and outside one's own nation. Alternatively, they may instead be admired and romanticised as noble savages. In idiomatic or figurative usage, a "barbarian" may also be an individual reference to a brutal, cruel, warlike, and insensitive person.
  The term originates from the Greek: βάρβαρος. In Ancient Greece, the Greeks used the term towards those who did not speak Greek and follow classical Greek customs. In Ancient Rome, the Romans used the term towards tribal non-Romans such as the Germanics, Celts, Gauls, Iberians, Thracians, Illyrians, Berbers, and Sarmatians. In the early modern period and sometimes later, the Byzantine Greeks used it for the Turks in a clearly pejorative manner.
context_section_description: The Oxford English Dictionary gives five definitions of the noun barbarian, including an obsolete Barbary usage.
  1. Etymologically, A foreigner, one whose language and customs differ from the speaker's.
  2. Hist. a. One not a Greek. b. One living outside the pale of the Roman Empire and its civilization, applied especially to the northern nations that overthrew them. c. One outside the pale of Christian civilization. d. With the Italians of the Renaissance: One of a nation outside of Italy.
  3. A rude, wild, uncivilized person. b. Sometimes distinguished from savage (perh. with a glance at 2). c. Applied by the Chinese contemptuously to foreigners.
  4. An uncultured person, or one who has no sympathy with literary culture.
  †5. A native of Barbary. [See Barbary Coast.] Obs. †b. Barbary pirates & A Barbary horse. Obs.
  The OED barbarous entry summarizes the semantic history. "The sense-development in ancient times was (with the Greeks) 'foreign, non-Hellenic,' later 'outlandish, rude, brutal'; (with the Romans) 'not Latin nor Greek,' then 'pertaining to those outside the Roman Empire'; hence 'uncivilized, uncultured,' and later 'non-Christian,' whence 'Saracen, heathen'; and generally 'savage, rude, savagely cruel, inhuman.'"
caption: "Germanic warriors" as depicted in Philipp Clüver's Germania Antiqua (1616)
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