savagism

[ sav-uh-jiz-uhm ]

noun

1. barbarism; savagery.

Word History and Origins

Origin of savagism¹

First recorded in 1790–1800; savage + -ism

Example Sentences

Its condemnation of the visible universe and of matter in general as the work of Satan rendered sinful all striving after material improvement, and the conscientious belief in such a creed could only lead man back, in time, to his original condition of savagism.

From Project Gutenberg

The reader will notice that our subject is extensive, that England and America, commerce and Christianity, civilization and savagism, are all involved and interested in it, and that Oregon, California, and British and Russian America have all participated in it during the past and present century; that we are tracing cause and effect and bringing to light influences that, while producing their legitimate results, were strange and unaccountable, because always kept under the selfish and unscrupulous policy of this English corporation of fur traders.

From Project Gutenberg

Priestcraft and Romanism, combined with ignorance and savagism, under the direction of the Honorable Hudson’s Bay Company traders, is a kind of mixture which Mr. Ewing Young says “is more than any American citizen’s feelings could support;” yet for six years it was submitted to, and the country increased, not so much in wealth, but in stout-hearted men and women, who had dared every thing, and endured many living deaths, to secure homes, and save a vast and rich country to the American Republic.

From Project Gutenberg

The following true and noble-hearted men sprang to arms, and, in fifteen hours from the time they had enrolled their names as defenders of Oregon, were on their way to protect their own and their countrymen’s lives from Hudson’s Bay Company, Jesuitical, and Indian savagism.

From Project Gutenberg

But it is a very radical form of savagism in worship, including human sacrifices among its rites, and as we have anticipated that it had its birth in the rice- and cotton-fields of the South, further remark on this division of the argument is deemed unnecessary.

From Project Gutenberg