Synonyms of barbarity

barbarity

noun

bär-ˈber-ə-tē 

as in cruelty

disposition to willfully inflict pain and suffering on others

more than one reluctant dental patient has been tempted to level the charge of barbarity against their dentist

Synonyms & Similar Words

• cruelty
• brutality
• atrocity
• savagery
• inhumanity
• savageness
• sadism
• heartlessness
• viciousness
• murderousness
• cruelness
• fiendishness
• barbarousness
• truculence
• wantonness
• inhumanness
• ruthlessness
• atrociousness
• mercilessness
• ferocity
• meanness
• pitilessness
• grimness
• oppressiveness
• bloodthirstiness
• fierceness
• ferociousness
• malevolence
• bloodlust
• malignity
• hard-heartedness
• spitefulness
• hatefulness
• unfeelingness
• maliciousness
• sanguinity
• fellness
• harshness
• nastiness
• sanguineness
• despitefulness
• cattiness
• heavy-handedness
• hardhandedness

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• humanity
• sympathy
• compassion
• kindness
• humaneness
• benignity
• tenderness
• warmth
• tenderheartedness
• kindheartedness
• pity
• mercy
• warmness
• good-heartedness
• clemency
• leniency
• warmheartedness
• charitableness
• mercifulness

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of barbarity

In the face of tragedy and crisis and inequality and barbarity, artists make work. —Chadd Scott, Forbes, 2 Oct. 2024

Rupturing the viewer’s passive gaze, Yellowjackets’ gut-wrenching barbarity is situated in these corporeal incisions and dissections. —Sakhi Thirani, JSTOR Daily, 22 Mar. 2023

The Russian president also encouraged acts of barbarity against his critics. —Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 18 Apr. 2022

Putin’s quasi-genocidal barbarities in Ukraine and Xi’s industrial-scale repression in Xinjiang threaten to restore a world of autocratic impunity and rampant atrocity. —Hal Brands, Foreign Affairs, 25 Feb. 2025