BARBARITY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does barbarity mean? 

• BARBARITY (noun)
  The noun BARBARITY has 2 senses:

1. the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane

2. a brutal barbarous savage act

  Familiarity information: BARBARITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BARBARITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

atrociousness; atrocity; barbarity; barbarousness; heinousness

Hypernyms ("barbarity" is a kind of...):

inhumaneness; inhumanity (the quality of lacking compassion or consideration for others)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A brutal barbarous savage act

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

barbarism; barbarity; brutality; savagery

Hypernyms ("barbarity" is a kind of...):

atrocity; inhumanity (an act of atrocious cruelty)

Derivation:

barbaric (without civilizing influences)

 Context examples 

Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it for ever with the bitterest remorse.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown; barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous become civilized.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Here, then, I retreated and lay down happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more from the barbarity of man.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)