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Philistines

,

meaning the ill-behaved and ignorant. The word so applied arose in Germany from the Charlies or Philisters, who were in everlasting collision with the students; and in these “town and gown rows” identified themselves with the town, called in our universities “the snobs.” Matthew Arnold, in the Cornhill Magazine, applied the term Philistine to the middle class, which he says is “ignorant, narrow-minded, and deficient in great ideas,” insomuch that the middle-class English are objects of contempt in the eyes of foreigners.

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Philanthropist (The)
Philemon and Baucis
Philip
Philip Nye (in Hudibras)
Philip Quarl
Philippe Egalité
Philippic
Philippins
Philips (John)
Philisides
Philistines
Philistines
Philistinism
Phillis
Philoclea
Philoctetēs
Philomel or Philomela
Philomelus
Philopœmen
Philosopher
Philosopher with the Golden Thigh

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Town and Gown Row (A)

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Philistines