[a. F. barbarisme 13th c., ad. L. barbarismus, a. Gr. βαρβαρισμός ‘foreign mode of speech,’ f. βαρβαρίζ-ειν to (behave or) speak like a foreigner. The extension from language to social condition (= F. barbarie, L. barbaria, -ies) is exclusively English.]
1. The use of words or expressions not in accordance with the classical standard of a language, especially such as are of foreign origin; orig. the mixing of foreign words or phrases in Latin or Greek; hence, rudeness or unpolished condition of language.
1579. Lyly, Euphues (Arb.), 131. Affected with their barbarisme.
1613. R. C., Table Alph., Barbarisme, rudenesse, a corrupt forme of writing or speaking.
1660. Stanley, Hist. Philos. (1701), 307/1. Amongst the faults of Speech is Barbarism.
1670. Cotton, Espernon, I. I. 16. The French Tongue, which then first began to purge it self from the Barbarism of past Ages.
b. A foreign or non-classical word or idiom.
1589. Marprel. Epit., G j b. I would not haue you claime all the skill, in Barbarismes and Solecismes vnto your self.
1638. Baker, Balzac’s Lett. (1654), III. 135. He smells a Barbarisme, or an incongruity seven miles off.
1752. Johnson, Rambl., No. 194, ¶ 7. Every fashionable barbarism of the present winter.
1801. W. Taylor, in Month. Mag., XII. 223. A barbarism, then, is a fault of style originating in rudeness and ignorance; but a solecism is a fault of style originating in affectation and over-refinement.
2. Barbarous social or intellectual condition; absence of culture; uncivilized ignorance and rudeness. (The proper opposite of civilization.)
1584. Powel, Lloyd’s Cambria, 388. Withdraw any people from ciuility to Barbarisme.
1612. Davies, Why Ireland, etc. (1787), 2. Have risen from barbarism to civility.
1665. Glanvill, Sceps. Sci., 79. After Barbarism had overrun Rome and Athens.
c. 1854. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., iii. (1858), 161. The imperceptible boundary between civilisation and barbarism.
b. A trait or characteristic of such a condition.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1650), II. 52. Plundering and other barbarismes that reign now abroad.
1860. Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alt., III. cxiv. 45. All obsolete barbarisms are coming back upon us.
1871. Daily News, 15 Dec., 5/2. The open gas flames which blaze in our rooms are as much a barbarism in the view of sanitary science as the fires around which our ancestors squatted before chimneys were invented.
† 3. Barbarous cruelty; BARBARITY. Obs.
1603. Florio, Montaigne (1634), 393. Some spice of that barbarisme [death by torture].
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. xiv. (1632), 767. So exquisite a barbarisme, as Richards enfamishment.
1665. Manley, Grotius Low-C. Warrs, 715. Ignominously tormented and murthered, which in the Salvages, was but ignorance; but in the Spaniards, perfect Barbarisme.
