Savagery is extremely cruel, wild, violent behaviour — hurting people or animals as if kindness had gone. News stories speak of the savagery of a war, a crime, or an attack. People also stretch it to weather and nature that do not care who gets hurt: the savagery of a storm. It is a fairly formal, heavy word, more at home in reports than in chat. Though actually, older English used the family of this word for people they called “uncivilised,” and that use can sound ugly and unfair now. In careful modern English, savagery is mostly about cruelty, not about whose country someone comes from, and it is kinder — and truer — to keep it that way.