Meaning of bashi-bazoukery | Babel Free

Definitions

Extreme physical violence; brutality; cruelty.

uncountable

Examples

“[…] I knew well the self-important back-patting, the servile admiration, the ambiguous analyses, the petty praise, and the pettier intellectual bashi-bazoukery --'”

“Late though the hour, there were quite enough people about to exaggerate the incident into fifty different versions and turn it into as bloodthirsty a piece of bashi-bazoukery as had ever thrilled Sirene.”

“Bashi-bazoukery was rampant in the area of Urfa and Ulysses was bastinadoed mercilessly.”

“His government was a system of Bashi-Bazoukery plus slave-raiding, with this difference, that in Sarawak, unlike the Soudan, the slave-raids were undertaken by the orders and under the direction of the Sultans or Rajahs of Brunei. […] Sarawak became independent, the Bashi-Bazoukery from Brunei ceased to trouble the tribes, and the homes of the villagers were no longer laid desolate in order to supply victims for the Sultan's pleasure.”

“Its only redeeming feature was that it prevented internecine wars; and when occasionally a good governor-general was appointed, the Bashi-Bazoukery was reduced to a minimum, and the force of the Egyptian Government was exerted for the repression of the slave-trade, which is the staple industry of the Soudan.”

“What a change for them, from the régime of Bashi-Bazoukery, of the pachas, of the stick, the lash, the prison; from the grinding taxation and the denial of even a form of justice!”

“He would not hurt a fly, and though he has shown himself very bellicose of late, and has with outstretched hand fiercely denounced Turkey and all its works, it is probable that if a Bashi-Bazouk were to stray within the paddock of Massey Hall, Peter would take him in and feed him, provide him with a short pipe, and do nothing worse to him than explain how he saved fourteen-pence on the Civil Service Estimates, and hint that if the Bashi-Bazoukery ever wants a financial regenerator, à la Goschen in Egypt, a letter addressed to Massey Hall, Cheshire, would reach the proper hands.”

“Yet in truth there is scarcely any contemporary Bashi-Bazoukery on Bulgarian soil.”

CEFR level