REBARBATIVE

Unattractive and objectionable.

It’s a word of no great age: it only began to appear at the end of the nineteenth century. It’s still uncommon, though you may spot it in the more erudite newspapers or in the work of writers with more power to their pens than most of us. A couple of examples: “To know what you like, in short, is not to know much about culture, which depends on the awkward and the rebarbative for its vigour.” (Independent, Aug. 2006); “Billy Budd is, for all its gnarled and even rebarbative syntax, astonishingly moving” (Washington Post, Sep. 2005).

The touch of weirdness in this word comes not from its unusualness but from its history. If the middle bit of rebarbative makes you think of barbers, you’re on the right track — the ultimate source is Latin barba, beard. Rebarbative came into English from the French rébarbatif with the same sense. This has been in French since the fourteenth century — it derives from the verb se rebarber, which referred to two men squaring up face to face, beard to beard, in close-quartered and hairy aggressiveness.

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