noun
- a barbarous or uncivilized state or condition.
- a barbarous act; something belonging to or befitting a barbarous condition.
- the use in a language of forms or constructions felt by some to be undesirably alien to the established standards of the language.
- such a form or construction: Some people consider “complected” as a barbarism.
noun
- a brutal, coarse, or ignorant act
- the condition of being backward, coarse, or ignorant
- a substandard or erroneously constructed or derived word or expression; solecism
- any act or object that offends against accepted taste
mid-15c., “uncivilized or rude nature,” from French barbarisme (13c.), from Latin barbarismus, from Greek barbarismos “foreign speech,” from barbarizein “to do as a foreigner does” (see barbarian). Only of speech in Greek, Latin, and French; sense extended in English to “uncivilized condition.”