PHILISTINE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Philistine

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/fˈɪləstˌin/ Listen

Philistine

noun

A person who is uninterested in intellectual pursuits. Synonyms: anti-intellectual, lowbrow.

A member of an Aegean people who settled ancient Philistia around the 12th century BC.

adjective

Of or relating to ancient Philistia or its culture or its people.

Smug and ignorant and indifferent or hostile to artistic and cultural values. Synonym: anti-intellectual.

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Etymology of 'Philistine'

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"Philistine" Quotes from Famous Books

... have no taste at all; not the slightest. I cannot tell good from bad. There never was such a complete Philistine. But I had the best man in London down, and another fellow from Vienna. They ...

— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... France, too, the final touch of elegance among the romantics was not to have any white linen in evidence; the shirt collar, in particular, being "considered as a mark of the grocer, the bourgeois, the philistine." A certain gilet rouge which Gautier wore when he led the claque at the first performance of "Hernani" has become historic. This flamboyant garment—a defiance and a challenge to the academicians who had come to hiss Hugo's play—was, in fact, a pourpoint or jerkin of cherry-coloured ...

— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... trials, seem to come under the head of sortilege, because something unknown is sought by their means. Yet these practices seem to be lawful, because David is related to have engaged in single combat with the Philistine (1 Kings 17:32, sqq.). Therefore it would seem that divination by lot is ...

— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... to be heart-felt and to be heard. It is said of Israel's army on one occasion, 'they cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of them.' Do you think that theirs would be very elaborate prayers? Was there any time to make a long petition when the sword of a Philistine was whizzing about the suppliant's ears? It was only a cry, but it was a cry; and so 'He was entreated of them.' If we are 'with Christ' we shall talk to Him; and if we are with Christ He will talk to us. It is for us to keep in the attitude of listening and, so far ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... not help disliking superiority; and as the old Northern sage declared, "the average of men is but moiety." Moiety does not mean necessarily mediocrity, but also that which is below mediocrity. What we call in England to-day, as Matthew Arnold called it, the Philistine element, continues to prove in our own time, to almost every superior man, the danger of being ...

— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

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