noun
definition
An uncivilized or feral human; a barbarian.
definition
A defiant person.
verb
definition
To attack or assault someone or something ferociously or without restraint.
example
No matter how anyone might savage me, I should stay strong.
definition
To criticise vehemently.
example
His latest film was savaged by most reviewers.
definition
(of an animal) To attack with the teeth.
definition
To make savage.
Examples of savages in a Sentence
They are savages and head-hunters.
The contact with savages would alone prove that.
The people are in manners complete savages.
The peninsula was then peopled by savages living in caves and subterranean holes.
Many of the pioneers of Nashville were slain by the Creek and Cherokee Indians, and at times the settlement was saved from destruction only by the heroism of Robertson, but in 1794 the savages were dealt a crushing blow at Nickojack on the lower Tennessee and much more peaceful relations were established.
We are now in a p' icion to sum up the ideas of savages about man's relations to the world.
In 1901 the population numbered 2,968,529, of whom 4932 were French (exclusive of French troops, who numbered 2537), 2,558,301 Annamese, 231,902 Cambodians, 9 Chinese, 4 2, 940 savages (Min Huong), the rest being Asiatics of other nationalities, together with a few Europeans other than French.
Belisarius remained at Constantinople in tranquil retirement until 559, when an incursion of Bulgarian savages spread a panic through the metropolis, and men's eyes were once more turned towards the neglected veteran, who placed himself at the head of a mixed multitude of peasants and soldiers, and repelled the barbarians with his wonted courage and adroitness.
The Andaman Islands, so near countries that have for ages attained considerable civilization and have been the seat of great empires, and close to the track of a great commerce which has gone on at least 2000 years, are the abode of savages as low in civilization as almost any known on earth.
History Of Cartography A capacity to understand the nature of maps is possessed even by peoples whom we are in the habit of describing as " savages."
Telepathy or clairvoyance, with or without trance, must have operated powerfully to produce a conviction of the dual nature of man, for it seems probable that facts unknown to the automatist are sometimes discovered by means of crystal-gazing, which is widely found among savages, as among civilized peoples.
Many were absolute savages, difficult to control, wayward and thoughtless like children.
There still remain the difficulties of all conversation between civilized men and unsophisticated savages, the tendency to hoax, and other sources of error and confusion.
Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man?
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter.
The nakedness of "savages," for example, has been imagined as evidence of their inferior humanness-but it has also been subject to romanticization (the "naturalness" of the "noble savage").
They were cultured, not at all savages, and for the first time since his capture, he held a glimmer of hope that he might find some semblance of happiness again.
Exposed to the incessant attacks of the savages, the place was a second time abandoned, February 1543.
From a shipwrecked English sailor he met with, who had lived with the savages, he heard of the river Brisbane.
Oracular possession of the kind above described is also common among savages and people of lower culture; and Dr Tylor, in his Primitive Culture, ii.
Their habits were simple, and they were disfigured neither by the worst crimes nor by the primitive superstitition of savages.
Eastward, many of the tribes are barbarous savages.
The semi-civilized aborigines, who adopted the Chinese language, dress and customs, were called Pe-pa-hwan (Anglice Pepo-hoans), while their wilder brethren bear the name of Chin-hwan or" green savages," otherwise Sheng-fan or " wild savages."
Some two centuries before the arrival of the Turks in Asia Minor the Seljuks, then a mere horde of savages, had overrun Persia, where they settled and adopted the civilization of the people they had subdued.
Their territories were surrounded and partly occupied by large tribes of savages.
It seems best to believe that Darius made an incursion in order to secure the frontier of the Danube, suffered serious reverses and retired with loss, and that this offered too good a chance to be missed for a moral tale about the discomfiture of the Great King by a few poor savages.
This meant the opening up of the world to commerce and the extension of European civilization to vast areas formerly peopled by savages or half-civilized peoples.
The battle in 1408, which was fought along the base of the cliffs here between the Savages of the Ards and the Irish, is described in Sir Samuel Ferguson's "Hibernian Nights Entertainment."
In 1901, however, a more serious effort was made to establish some kind of government in the southern province of Dutch New Guinea, at Merawkay, where a small Dutch-Indian garrison was stationed with the professed object of preventing raids by bands of savages into the British territory near by.
Hitherto the Spaniards had met only the weak islanders, or the more robust cannibal Caribs, both alike pure savages.
Their population is divided between a white minority, among whom there are to be found strains of Indian blood, and a coloured majority, sometimes docile and industrious, sometimes mere savages.
The Totonacs inhabit northern Vera Cruz and speak a language related to that of the Mayas; the Tarascos form a small group living in Michoacan; the Matlanzingos, or Matlaltzincas, live near the Tarascos, the savage Apaches, a nomadic group of tribes ranging from Durango northward into the United States; the Opata-Pima group, inhabiting the western plateau region from Sonora and Chihuahua south to Guadalajara, is sometimes classed as a branch of the Nahuatlaca; the Seris, a very small family of savages, occupy Tiburon Island and the adjacent mainland of Sonora; and the Guaicuros, or Yumas, are to be found in the northern part of the peninsula of Lower California.
Dreams are sometimes explained by savages as journeys performed by the sleeper, sometimes as visits paid by other persons, by animals or objects to him; hallucinations, possibly more frequent in the lower stages of culture, must have contributed to fortify this interpretation, and the animistic theory in general.
With Frontenac gone, these savages almost strangled the colony.
But their colonies were democracies, disunited because each was pursuing its own special interests, while the French were united under despotic leadership. Frontenac attacked the Iroquois mercilessly in 1696 and forced these proud savages to sue for peace.
A little knowledge about its sources above these points was given by the savages to de la Fuente in 1759 and to Mendoza in 1764, and we are also indebted to Humboldt for some vague data.
And this lack of interest is found to-day as a general characteristic of savages.
In the hill-country south of the lake are two forest tribes, Orang-ulu and Orang-lubu, pure savages of whom practically nothing is known, affiliated by most authorities to the Battas.
They profess Mahommedanism but are practically savages.
Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished as Mrs Lennox or Mrs Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt.
After the conquest of the Hausa States in1902-1903the king's writ ran - with the exception of a few districts inhabited by primitive savages - through the whole area known as Northern Nigeria.
Such supplies might be obtained by forcible raiding or as tribute of conquered countries, or perhaps as the free offerings of simple savages awed by the arrival of ships and civilized well-armed crews, or again by royal missions in which rich gifts on both sides were exchanged, or lastly by private trading.
As savages they were strict in their religious observances and religion came into almost every action of life, and they have been, in most instances, easily led to accept Christianity.
The hypothesis of the collector, the man who keeps a rain-gauge, or the missionary among savages, is to be discounted from as a source of error.
Bancroft, " was to make the savages work out their own salvation and that of the priests also."
Even amongst savages there are few communities, and those but sparse, which subsist entirely upon what is directly provided by nature.
Their principal concern was for the savages, over whom they acquired an extraordinary influence.
It is not that savages are devoid of the ascetic instinct.
We come to a third widespread reason for fasting, common among savages.
In what follows, then, we shall, indeed, venture to present a wholesale appreciation of the religious idea as it is for primitive man in general; but our account will respect the modern anthropological method that bids the student keep closely to the actualities of the religious experience of savages, as it can with reasonable accuracy be gathered from what they do and say.