savage
pronunciation
How to pronounce savage in British English:
UK [ˈsævɪdʒ]
How to pronounce savage in American English:
US [ˈsævɪdʒ]
-
- Noun:
- a member of an uncivilized people
- a cruelly rapacious person
-
- Verb:
- attack brutally and fiercely
- criticize harshly or violently
-
- Adjective:
- (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering
- wild and menacing
- without civilizing influences
- marked by extreme and violent energy
Word Origin
- savage
- savage: [13] A savage is etymologically someone who comes from the ‘woods’ – woodlands being anciently viewed as places of untamed nature, beyond the pale of civilized human society. The word comes via Old French sauvage from Vulgar Latin *salvāticus, an alteration of Latin silvāticus ‘of the woods, wild’. This was a derivative of silva ‘woods, forest’ (source of English sylvan [16]), a word of uncertain origin.=> sylvan
- savage (adj.)
- mid-13c., "fierce, ferocious;" c. 1300, "wild, undomesticated, untamed" (of animals and places), from Old French sauvage, salvage "wild, savage, untamed, strange, pagan," from Late Latin salvaticus, alteration of silvaticus "wild," literally "of the woods," from silva "forest, grove" (see sylvan). Of persons, the meaning "reckless, ungovernable" is attested from c. 1400, earlier in sense "indomitable, valiant" (c. 1300).
- savage (n.)
- "wild person," c. 1400, from savage (adj.).
- savage (v.)
- "to tear with the teeth, maul," 1880, from savage (adj.). Earlier "to act the savage" (1560s). Related: Savaged; savaging.
Example
- 1. The french revolution was for him a savage release of irrational instincts .
- 2. This , then , was a world of savage repression and brutal predation .
- 3. Britain 's newspaper market is the world 's most savage .
- 4. The punishments were often savage .
- 5. Having been rebuffed by many of his arab neighbors as an eccentric menace , gaddafi cast himself instead as an african leader , backing regimes that conducted savage campaigns of violence in west africa .