Meaning of wargus | Babel Free

Definitions

An outlaw, outcast, or exile; one driven out of society for their crimes.

historical

Examples

“If anyone has dug up or despoiled a body already in the sepulchre, let him be an outlaw (wargus) — that is, let him be expelled from that district until it is agreeable to the relatives of the dead and those relatives themselves have sought on his behalf that he be allowed to live within the district.”

“Rather, civilization is made when the wolf becomes sovereign. Hobbes's sovereign wolf resembles instead Giorgio Agamben's sovereign, the correlative figure to the homo sacer characterized as the banned Germanic outlaw, the wargus, or wolf-man: […]”

“In ancient Germanic law, the wargus was a figure 'excluded from the community' whom 'anyone was permitted to kill'.”

“The Old Norse word for wolf (vargr) was also the legal term for “outlaw”—that is, the wolf is that person who is outside the law. In ancient Germanic law, the term wargus was used to refer to both the outlaw and the wolf-man.]”

CEFR level