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Philistine   /fˈɪləstˌin/   Listen
Philistine

noun
1.
A person who is uninterested in intellectual pursuits.  Synonyms: anti-intellectual, lowbrow.
2.
A member of an Aegean people who settled ancient Philistia around the 12th century BC.
adjective
1.
Of or relating to ancient Philistia or its culture or its people.
2.
Smug and ignorant and indifferent or hostile to artistic and cultural values.  Synonym: anti-intellectual.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Philistine" Quotes from Famous Books



... through the fingers, and praised and dispraised, after its wont. The Symbolists sneered and told Peter to his teeth he was a Philistine; they said you can't boot-lick Nature: you've got to bully her, demand her soul, make her give you her Sign! Quieter men came and studied Emma Campbell and her cat, and clapped Peter on the back; the more exuberant Latins kissed him, noisy, hearty, hairy kisses on ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... attended to the business of his country at the expense of his own, but much that he attempted succeeded and enough still remains to enable us to realize that by his efforts he made his estate attractive. He was no Barbarian or Philistine. He had a sense of beauty and it is only in recent years that his countrymen, absorbed in material undertakings, have begun to appreciate the things that he was ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... declined from his brother to other of the people. And all this was showed to Saul, and David was brought to him, and said to Saul: I, thy servant, shall fight against this giant if thou wilt. And Saul said to him: Thou mayst not withstand this Philistine nor fight against him, for thou art but a child; this giant hath been a fighter from his childhood. David said to Saul: I thy servant kept my father's sheep, and there came a lion and a bear and took away a wether from the middle ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... which Guevara, Castiglione, and Lyly are the most famous instances. The ambition of those who frequent Courts has always been to appear distinguished—distinguished that is from the vulgar and the ordinary, or, as we should now say, from the Philistine. In the Courts of the Renaissance period, where learning was considered so admirable, this necessary distinction would naturally take the form of a cultured, if not pedantic, diction; and for this it was natural that men should go to the classics, and more especially to classical orators, as models ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... force of Philistine fatuity can no further go than it has gone in the 'laicization' of the home of Jeanne d'Arc, I ought to say that the actual keeper of the place seemed to me to be a decent sort of fellow, not wholly destitute of respect for its traditions and its significance. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert


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