Word.ws English Dictionary

barbarise

barbarise is the alternative form of barbarize.

Meaning of barbarize

Verb

barbarize (third-person singular simple present barbarizes, present participle barbarizing, simple past and past participle barbarized)

  1. (transitive) To cause to become savage or uncultured.
  2. (intransitive) To become savage or uncultured.
    • The Roman empire was barbarizing rapidly from the time of Trajan.1839, Thomas De Quincey, “Philosophy of Roman History”, in Blackwood's Magazine
  3. (intransitive) To adopt a foreign or barbarous mode of speech.
    • The ill habit […] of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms.[1644], [John Milton], Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib, [London]: […] [Thomas Underhill and/or Thomas Johnson], →OCLC

Forms of barbarise

third-person singular presentbarbarises
present participlebarbarising
past participlebarbarised
pastbarbarised

Words formed from barbarise

Questions about barbarise

What is barbarise the alternative form of?
Barbarise is the alternative form of barbarize.

Words near barbarise in the dictionary

  1. barbariously
  2. barbariousness
  3. Barbaris
  4. barbarisation
  5. barbarisations
  6. barbarise
  7. barbarised
  8. barbarises
  9. barbarising
  10. barbarism
  11. barbarisms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barbarise (page history and authors); barbarize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “barbarise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barbarise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.