Barbarian

(89), n. [Lat. barbarus, Gr. βάρβαρος, foreign, barbarous.] 1. A foreigner. [Obs.] Proud Greece all nations else barbarians held. Denham. 2. A man in his rude, savage state; an uncivilized person. Pyrrhus, seeing the Romans marshal their army with some art and skill, said with surprise, these barbarians have nothing barbarous in their discipline. Hume. 3. A cruel, savage, brutal man; one destitute of pity or humanity. “Thou fell barbarian.” Philips. In reality, the term barbarians seems, for many ages, to have implied nothing either hostile or disrespectful. By a natural onomatopoeia, the Greeks used the iterated syllables barbar to denote that a man was unintelligible in his talk; and by the word barbarian originally, it is probable that no sort of reproach was intended, but simply the fact that the people so called spoke a language not intelligible to Greeks. Latterly, the term seems to have been often used as one of mere convenience for classification, indicating the non-Hellenes in opposition to the Hellenes; and it was not meant to express any qualities whatever of the aliens,—simply they were described as being aliens. . . . At this day, it is very probable that the Chinese mean nothing more by the seemingly offensive term outside barbarians.” De Quincey.