How to Use barbarism in a Sentence

barbarism

noun
  • The barbarism of his dictatorship cannot be ignored.
  • Such barbarisms cannot be tolerated.
  • The horror and the barbarism here is hard to even comprehend.
    — Jordan King, MSNBC Newsweek, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Graham, presumably, didn’t mean to liken his bill to barbarism.
    — Sarah Jaffe, New Republic, 29 Sep. 2017
  • What drew me to the story was that gesture of humanity in the midst of barbarism.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 18 Feb. 2026
  • Israel will stand against the forces of barbarism until victory.
    — Anders Hagstrom, Fox News, 31 Oct. 2023
  • On the contrary, the music was the best critique of the barbarism that surrounded it.
    — Adam Kirsch, The New York Review of Books, 10 Feb. 2022
  • This idea that the world is and has always been dog-eat-dog is uninformed barbarism masked as wise cynicism.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 26 July 2023
  • Like Carmela, museums are past masters at putting a respectable face on barbarism.
    — Rhonda Lieberman, The New Republic, 23 Sep. 2019
  • In fact, the worst human barbarism demands our best creative efforts, lest ugliness win out.
    — Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek, 26 July 2017
  • Ace Ventura is a ball of slapstick but also of volcanic barbarism.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 8 Oct. 2024
  • Things move forward, knowledge advances and barbarism joins the resistance.
    — Washington Post, 6 Jan. 2022
  • Or putting a death in the context of the thousands of other people who’ve perished through similar barbarism.
    — Froma Harrop, The Denver Post, 25 May 2017
  • These are real trigger words for Russians in general who don't like to be accused of barbarism.
    — CBS News, 23 Mar. 2022
  • Germany’s plunge from the heights of civilization to the depths of barbarism is an everlasting shock.
    — Naomi Fry, The New Yorker, 23 Apr. 2018
  • Hamas’s pledge to record and air executions that have yet to take place is new and seems calibrated to incite fear over the barbarism to come.
    — Drew Harwell, Washington Post, 12 Oct. 2023
  • The civilized world wants to end the carnage in Venezuela, but Cuba is the author of the barbarism.
    — Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 16 July 2017
  • That movement includes people who have consistently chipped away at the top as well as the bottom of the barbarism of their forebears.
    — Douglas Murray, National Review, 30 Oct. 2017
  • Lyle, a writer and producer, read the comments, many of them skeptical that girls would descend into such barbarism.
    — New York Times, 10 Nov. 2021
  • And there’s the mirrored presumption of an inevitable downslide into violence and barbarism.
    — Kelly McClure, Vulture, 14 Dec. 2021
  • But the vast majority of us prefer civilization over barbarism, and there’s a value to that.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Orlando Sentinel, 14 Mar. 2026
  • For instance, the surprising details of Liat’s capture fly in the face of the tales of barbarism the subjects have been told.
    — Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 24 Feb. 2025
  • The cradle of ancient civilization is the epicenter of present-day barbarism.
    — Andrew Doran, National Review, 14 July 2017
  • Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals.
    — Andrew Mark Miller, Washington Examiner, 13 June 2020
  • The ironies of barbarism in Dear Comrades are alarming and recognizable.
    — Armond White, National Review, 24 Feb. 2021
  • But the recent re-eruption of barbarism in the heart of the modern West exposes the many wrinkles in this story about the free world.
    — Victor J. Blue, Harpers Magazine, 23 Nov. 2025
  • But the recent re-eruption of barbarism in the heart of the modern West exposes the many wrinkles in this story about the free world.
    — Victor J. Blue, Harpers Magazine, 23 Nov. 2025
  • But the hours of video Hamas has collected and shared online also have been used by Israel to expose the group’s barbarism.
    — Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post, 18 Oct. 2023
  • The pause in Russian attacks on Kyiv held over the weekend, while other parts of Ukraine suffered more acts of barbarism.
    — Simon Shuster, The Atlantic, 3 Feb. 2026
  • The government was trying to send a warning, but the barbarism of the public execution appalled even the most jaded tabloids.
    — CBS News, 29 June 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'barbarism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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