Savage (pejorative term)

Savage is a derogatory term to describe a person or people the speaker regards as primitive and uncivilized.

It has predominantly been used to describe Indigenous people worldwide, including North America, South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Its predominant usage in American English refers to native North Americans.

Sometimes a legal, military, and ethnic term, it has shifted in meaning since its first usages in the 16th century.

Since 1776, American politicians have used the term "savage" to refer to peoples of North America, South America, Africa, and Asia, as well as those affiliated with Nazism, Communism, and terrorism.^[1][2]

According to the National Museum of the American Indian, the word "served to justify the taking of Native lands, sometimes by treaty and other times through coercion or conquest".^[3]

During the 16th century, the noble savage, a romanticized literary archetype, emerged in Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature. The stock character symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a character in tune with nature and uncorrupted by civilization.