From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbarbarousbar‧bar‧ous /ˈbɑːbərəs $ ˈbɑːr-/ adjective 1 CRUELextremely cruel in a way that is shocking SYN barbaric The trade in exotic birds is barbarous.2 NATURALwild and not civilized a savage barbarous people —barbarously adverb
Examples from the Corpus
barbarous• In many cases, perhaps, it simply meant that clergy and people were equally barbarous.• He saw it now as his mission to establish similar normality in a barbarous land.• It might well be barbarous on either side of the jeweled door.• Of course we live in less barbarous times.• When the Persian ambassadors arrived at Athens, demanding tribute in their barbarous tongue, my heart filled with fury.• Still less was he interested in what he considered the barbarous traditions of the Anglo-Saxon Church which he found on his arrival.• They will also say that the Faroese method of killing whales is a barbarous way of treating an intelligent, warm-blooded mammal.Origin barbarous (1400-1500) Latin barbarus, from Greek barbaros “foreign” 