Google the words “Bush barbarism” and you get 612,000 hits. For “Blair barbarism” you get 271,000; “Gordon Brown barbarism” gets you 117,000. Bertie Aherne gets a mere 805, behind Winnie the Pooh at a whopping 956! Reading a selection of entries it would seems that most writers are using the word barbarism incorrectly. As disinterested is different to uninterested, barbarism is different to barbarity.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines barbarism as:
1. Uncivilised nature or condition; uncultured ignorance or absence of culture...
2. The use of words and idioms not in accordance with the normal standard language; absence of cultivation of language...
This is of course unfortunate for the many writers who think the word describes a baby-eating tendency among our leaders of Bush, Blair and Brown. On the other hand Bush has been responsible for plenty of barbarisms – every time he says nucular for example (nucular barbarism??) I have no idea what Winnie the Pooh did to get linked to the word . Hunny is simply bad spelling.
