Hot Word of the Day, Barbarian (Blah-Blah-Blah), Your Vocabulary Vitamin

Actually, it should be bar-bar, not blah-blah. That's what it sounded like when the snooty Hellenic Greeks first heard the Egyptians, Persians, Germans, Celts and others babbling away incomprehensibly in foreign languages. Bar-bar babble-babble. They began calling the babblers ba-ba-barbarians, with the connotation of being unrefined and uneducated. So you see ol' Etta Mology has not gone lexiconically loony using a word of the day as common as this Vocabulary Vitamin, barbarian. No doubt you too are finding the origin of barbarian to be etymologically riveting, and you have resolved never to name your daughter "Barbara."

From now on, when we hear random hubbub, it's quite etymologically accurate, if not culturally comprehensible, to call out "barbarians!"

Is barbarian, our Vocabulary Vitamin, onomatopoetic?

If "barbarian" sounds like the babble the Greeks heard, then it is an onomatopoeic word, coming into English by way of Medieval Latin barbarinus, from Latin barbaria, from the ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (bárbaros). The verb βαρβαρίζειν (barbarízein) in ancient Greek actually meant the practice of imitating linguistic sounds and grammatical errors non-Greeks made. Barbarian came to mean a foreigner or group of foreigners whose first language was not Greek, or who spoke Greek crudely. It is about as complimentary as our modern day "redneck," in its pejorative and derisive tone.

Do we care what Plato had to say about barbarian, our Vocabulary Vitamin?

"Plato (Statesman 262de) rejected the Greek-barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on (these) grounds: dividing the world into Greeks and non-Greeks told one nothing about the second group. In Homer's works, the term appeared only once (Iliad 2.867), in the form βάρβαροΦώνος (barbarophonos) ("of incomprehensible speech"), used of the Carians fighting for Troy during the Trojan War." Thank you, Plato and Homer, you may now return to your studies.

How did a word of the day once meaning "babblehead" come to mean "Conan"?

That's the wacky way of word meanings for you. They just won't stay put. They keep adding and changing shades of meaning until you barely recognize their ancestral origins. From crude non-Greek babbler, to uneducated ruffian, to savage and invincible warrior, to movie and comic book hero, and back to unrefined lout and atavistic throwback, barbarian is a word of the day with a past.

bar• bar• i• an

Pronunciation: \bär-ˈber-ē-ən\

Function: adjective

Etymology: Latin barbarus - more at barbarous

Date: 14th century

1: of or relating to a land, culture, or people alien and usually believed to be inferior to another land, culture, or people
2: lacking refinement, learning, or artistic or literary culture

- barbarian noun

- bar• bar• i• an• ism \-ē-ə-ˌni-zəm\ noun

Sources:

"barbarian." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010.

Merriam-Webster Online. 5 July 2010
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/barbarian>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian#Hellenic_stereotype