How to Use barbarous in a Sentence

barbarous

adjective
  • These barbarous acts must end and those at the helm must be held accountable.
    — Lukas Mikelionis, Fox News, 20 June 2018
  • Lies told by people who are simply too afraid to look at such an ugly, barbarous reality.
    — Clare Malone, New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2026
  • Putin’s barbarous invasion has generated a wave of outrage across the world.
    — Janice Gross Stein, Foreign Affairs, 9 Mar. 2022
  • Each new invention of war has been assailed and denounced as barbarous and anti-Christian.
    — Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian, 24 Feb. 2017
  • There are many expenses necessary in a civilized country for which there is no occasion in one that is barbarous.
    — Bruce Bartlett, The New Republic, 17 Aug. 2020
  • Bentivegna has assembled a vibrant cast that captures the sheer barbarous nature of the play with a passion that whirls into a frenzy.
    — Theodore P. Mahne, NOLA.com, 26 Oct. 2017
  • His prose is prose, definitively prose, anti-felicitous and slightly barbarous.
    — James Parker, The Atlantic, 13 Mar. 2021
  • People dismiss gold as a barbarous relic and governments de-emphasize its importance as a relic.
    — Clem Chambers, Forbes, 27 Sep. 2021
  • In addition, several aspects of the story were updated to avoid the barbarous, hook-nosed stereotypes of the original.
    — Lorraine Ali, latimes.com, 14 June 2019
  • The international community cannot either forget about that or allow such barbarous crimes to be committed again in the future.
    — David Filipov, Washington Post, 2 May 2017
  • But the barbarous details of Romina’s death spread quickly, moving the needle of outrage and change toward protecting the lives of women and children.
    — Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, 23 June 2020
  • To keep civilization going — and to keep barbarous forces in check — requires constant attention, or, to borrow a phrase, eternal vigilance.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 22 Aug. 2017
  • Many Shia volunteers died delivering Sunnis from the barbarous rule of IS.
    — The Economist, 28 Mar. 2018
  • Supporting Ukraine in the face of Russia’s barbarous invasion is an investment in both the future of Ukraine and that of the West.
    — James P. Moore Jr., Fortune Europe, 22 Feb. 2024
  • With the help of the Russians, the Iranians have enabled the barbarous Assad regime to prevail in Syria’s civil war.
    — Jonathan S. Tobin, National Review, 26 Sep. 2017
  • Three days after a barbarous playground attack left the lakeside town in grief and shock, and in an amphitheater facing the public park where the tragedy occurred, the Annecy Intl.
    — Ben Croll, Variety, 11 June 2023
  • Historically, in western cultures, with some notable exceptions, suicide cases were treated with at best disdain and at worst barbarous practices.
    — Simon Harold Walker, Time, 6 Sep. 2019
  • Israels far right wing Government declares war on the terrorists Hamas for barbarous heinous crimes committed on Oct 07.
    — Adam Taylor, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2023
  • The retired brigadier general, said to be suffering from dementia, spent the last several years of his life consumed by legal battles stemming from his short but barbarous reign as the country’s leader.
    — John Otis, Washington Post, 1 Apr. 2018
  • And the pagan warriors’ attacks on Christian monasteries no doubt cemented their barbarous reputation.
    — Molly Glick, Discover Magazine, 27 Mar. 2021
  • Alyokhina writes frankly about the barbarous conditions and treatment in a prison system deemed by human rights groups, including Amnesty International, as one of the worst in the world.
    — Lindsay Schnell, USA TODAY, 21 Dec. 2022
  • The pontiff reiterated his condemnation of war as barbarous and sacrilegious.
    — NBC News, 27 Mar. 2022
  • Iconic images of the accused being burned alive were deployed in the propaganda wars that cast the Black struggle, depending on the teller, as either barbarous or suffused with its own fearsome justice.
    — New York Times, 26 Dec. 2021
  • Coach Tom Herman sent forth Buechele and Ehlinger to battle in the circle drill, a barbarous exercise typically off limits to quarterbacks.
    — Nick Moyle, San Antonio Express-News, 21 Apr. 2018
  • Yet, Stowe takes her pains to emphasize that barbarous black characters (Sambo, Quimbo, Topsy) and white slave-traders alike are corrupted by the system.
    — Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 14 June 2021
  • The resonance and immediacy of these barbarous 19th-century events are testament to Zhang’s storytelling powers, and should stand as a warning to all of us.
    — New York Times, 3 Apr. 2022
  • The chaos in Ithaca may be political and ethical—a violation of custom—but stretches of the poem are barbarous and wild, beyond civilized life altogether.
    — David Denby, New Yorker, 21 June 2026
  • Saudi Arabia, like most of the world’s barbarous regimes, looked at the 2022 World Cup—held in Qatar, another repressive state—and saw a massive success.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 6 June 2023
  • The difference between early colonial law and British law is made clear in the prohibition on the one hand of bodily punishments that are inhumane, barbarous, or cruel, and on the other hand, the sort of death that would be suffered by Peters.
    — Marilynne Robinson, Harper’s Magazine , 20 July 2022
  • And, as all the world knows, Germany murdered 12 million people in death camps and conducted the most barbarous war in history in Russia, against a country and a regime that reciprocated Nazi savagery.
    — Conrad Black, National Review, 27 Sep. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'barbarous.' 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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