Savage (MARC station)
WordNet
adjective
(1) Without civilizing influences
"Barbarian invaders"
"Barbaric practices"
"A savage people"
"Fighting is crude and uncivilized especially if the weapons are efficient"-Margaret Meade
"Wild tribes"
(2) (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering
"A barbarous crime"
"Brutal beatings"
"Cruel tortures"
"Stalin's roughshod treatment of the kulaks"
"A savage slap"
"Vicious kicks"
(3) Wild and menacing
"A ferocious dog"
(4) Marked by extreme and violent energy
"A ferocious beating"
"Fierce fighting"
"A furious battle"
noun
(5) A cruelly rapacious person
(6) A member of an uncivilized people
verb
(7) Criticize harshly or violently
"The press savaged the new President"
"The critics crucified the author for plagiarizing a famous passage"
(8) Attack brutally and fiercely
WiktionaryText
Etymology
From , < , from , alteration of , from .
Adjective
- wild; not cultivated
- barbaric; not civilized
- 1719- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
- ...I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where I supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their human feastings upon the bodies of their fellow-creatures.
- 1719- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
- fierce and ferocious
- brutal, vicious or merciless
- The woman was killed in a savage manner.
Noun
- An uncivilized or feral human; a barbarian.
- 1847, Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred: or The New Crusade, page 251
- 'Well, my lord, I don't know,' said Freeman with a sort of jolly sneer; 'we have been dining with the savages.'
'They are not savages, Freeman.'
'Well, my lord, they have not much more clothes, anyhow; and as for knives and forks, there is not such a thing known.'
- 'Well, my lord, I don't know,' said Freeman with a sort of jolly sneer; 'we have been dining with the savages.'
- 1847, Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred: or The New Crusade, page 251
- A defiant person.