(n.) A native or an inhabitant of ancient Philistia, a coast region of southern Palestine.
(n.) A bailiff.
(n.) A person deficient in liberal culture and refinement; one without appreciation of the nobler aspirations and sentiments of humanity; one whose scope is limited to selfish and material interests.
(a.) Of or pertaining to the Philistines.
(a.) Uncultured; commonplace.
Example Sentences:
(1) But then, if centuries of privileged breeding and education produce dunderheads and philistines, that proves talent is genetically random, not inherited.
(2) The Gurlitt hoard is a survival of the Nazis' strange and ambivalent attitude to art, from Hitler's aesthetic New Order to the simple philistine greed that probably motivated most of their art theft.
(3) They said it was suicide and, yes, Abbas had had these thoughts in Fara' Philistine – we used that as leverage to push William Hague into action – but there is no way he would have done that.
(4) Yet there is no chance of either main party delivering the coup de grace, given the furious outcry and accusations of philistinism that would ensue.
(5) A lament for the failed ideals of a group of 1960s Cambridge graduates who all too quickly swap their literary dreams for coffee table books and hack journalism, the play was an elegiac threnody for soiled friendship and a descent from intellectual rigour and seriousness to philistinism.
(6) But saying anything is fine if it sells well seems philistine.
(7) In this two-hour near-monologue Bates played the fallen actor-hero forever ranting about being forced to work on tiny stages for lousy wages in front of philistines.
(8) Her review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, in Harper's magazine, accuses him of, among other things, philistinism: "He has turned the full force of his intellect against religion, and all his verbal skills as well, and his humane learning, too, which is capacious enough to include some deeply minor poetry."
(9) Unlike many disputes between labels and artists, the argument between Berry Gordy Jr and his brother-in-law Marvin Gaye over What's Going On doesn't easily reduce to philistine versus visionary.
(10) It's her philistinism, her ignorance, and the way she revels in her ignorance.
(11) (10) Including the Rich Kids, Hot Club, Dead Men Walking, the Flying Padovanis, Slinky Vagabond, the Mavericks, the Philistines and, most recently, International Swingers .
(12) "Proper" here works as a strategy to avoid seeming privileged, while at the same time tuning in cunningly to anti-intellectual prejudice (what is "proper" is not over-thought) – all as Cameron conducts, like some kind of over-moisturised Visigoth, his philistine economic campaign against the BBC, universities ("proper education"), and the National Health Service ("proper healthcare").
(13) But the self-congratulatory philistinism of this year's panel has done a disservice to the writers they selected, the writers they didn't, and the readers who are thought to be so superficial that all you need to do is convince them that a book will "zip along" faster than an episode of Downton .
(14) Now Nicolas Sarkozy wants to answer the critics who call him a cultural philistine by plunging into his new love for architecture and creating a Greater Paris that would be world's most environmentally friendly and boldly designed metropolis.
(15) You are not only about to make philistines of yourselves, but philistines of us all."
(16) The whipping he received over The Corrections was his first experience of being publicly reviled, and he blames it on the prevailing mood of philistinism.
(17) Pellerin reflects the general trend across an increasingly philistine west, but it’s not the philistinism that I’m so much worried about.
(18) But what he called "the fight against bad English" is too often understood, thanks to the perversities of his own example, as a philistine and joyless campaign in favour of that shibboleth of dull pedants "plain English".
(19) Gambling away his savings, Grant – a "clever bloke" who thinks he can only be happy in English exile – becomes trapped among the kind of chauvinistic, philistine drunkards he affects to despise, yet slowly he begins to emulate them.
(20) MK’s defenders argue that such philistinism threatens a modern masterpiece which deserves to be recognised as a world heritage site.
Vulgarian
Definition:
(n.) A vulgar person; one who has vulgar ideas. Used also adjectively.
Example Sentences:
(1) No sooner have the vulgarians elsewhere in the BBC fallen from grace – having, say, mucked up the task of naming the Blue Peter cat or allowed Messrs Ross and Brand to redefine the boundaries of taste – than a leader writer on any self–respecting newspaper, an MP or prime minister will opine with patriotic pride about the World Service's colossal editorial virtues and its importance to Britain's reputation across the universe.