Philistine
Contents
English
Noun
Philistine (plural Philistines)- A person who lacks appreciation of art or culture.
- A person from ancient Philistia.
Adjective
Philistine (comparative more Philistine, superlative most Philistine)
- Of or pertaining to the ancient Philistines.
- Lacking appreciation of culture; also philistine.
Thesaurus 1
earthly, earthy, epicier, flinty, formalist, functionally illiterate, general, grammarless, groundling, guttersnipe, hard, hardened, hardhearted, heathen, high-camp, homely, homespun, hoodwinked, hooligan, ill-bred fellow, ill-educated, illiterate, impervious, indurated, insensitive, inured, kitschy, led astray, looby, lout, low fellow, low-camp, lowbrow, material, materialistic, methodologist, middle-class type, misinformed, misinstructed, mistaught, model child, mucker, mundane, nonintellectual, nouveau riche, ordinary, organization man, pachydermatous, pagan, parrot, parvenu, peasant, pedant, perfectionist, plastic person, plebeian, pop, popular, precisian, precisianist, profane, proof against, public, ribald, rough, roughneck, rowdy, rude, ruffian, secular, sheep, square, steeled against, steely, stony, teenybopper, temporal, terrestrial, thick-skinned, trimmer, unbooked, unbookish, unbooklearned, unbriefed, uncultivated, uncultured, unedified, uneducated, unerudite, unguided, uninstructed, unintellectual, unlearned, unlettered, unliterary, unread, unrefined, unscholarly, unschooled, unspiritual, unstudious, untaught, untutored, upstart, vernacular, vulgarian, vulgarist, worldly, yes-man, yokel, Babbitt, Babbittish, Gothic, Middle American, anal character, arriviste, barbarous, bookless, boor, bounder, bourgeois, burgher, cad, callous, calloused, campy, carnal, carnal-minded, case-hardened, churl, clown, common, commonplace, compulsive character, conformer, conformist, conventionalist, deceived,
Thesaurus 2
Babbitt, Boeotian, barbarian, boeotian, boob, boor, boorish, boring, bourgeois, capitalist, clown, commercial, commonplace, crass, dull, ignoramus, lout, lowbrow, materialist, materialistic, middlebrow, narrow-minded, prosaic, tasteless, uncultivated, uncultured, uneducated, unenlightened, unlearned, unlettered, unread, unrefined, untutored, vulgarian, yahoo
Alternative forms
- philistine
Etymology
From Late Latin Philistinus, from Late Ancient Greek Φυλιστῖνοι (Phulistinoi) from Hebrew פְּלִשְׁתִּים (P'lishtim) from פְּלֶשֶׁת (P'leshet, “Philistia”).
The sense relating to lack of education and culture was introduced to English by Thomas Carlyle and greatly popularised by Matthew Arnold. It is derived from German student use of the term Philister to refer to the burghers of the town. This apparently derived from the use of the biblical text "the Philistines be upon you, Samson" in a memorial service for a Jena university student who died as the result of a town vs. gown dispute in 1693.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA: /ˈfɪl.ɪ.staɪn/, SAMPA: /"fIl.I.staIn/
- (US) IPA: /ˈfɪl.ɪ.staɪn/, /ˈfɪl.ə.stin/, /fɪˈlɪ.stin/, SAMPA: /"fIl.I.staIn/, /"[email protected]/, /fI"lI.stin/
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,Audio (US) noicon (file)
,Audio (US) noicon (file) Audio (US) noicon (file)
Related terms
Translations
Noun
Adjective
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