internecine

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   characterized by bloodshed and carnage for both sides

   Internecine war.

2. 2
   adj

   (of conflict) within a group or organization

   An internecine feud among proxy holders.

3. 3
   adj

   Mutually destructive; most often applied to warfare.

   Internecine strife in Gaza claimed its most senior victim yesterday when militants assassinated one of the most hated security chiefs there.

4. 4
   adj

   Characterized by struggle within a group, usually applied to an ethnic or familial relationship.

   The Mongol people were plagued by internecine conflict until Genghis Khan unified them by focusing their aggression outwards on other peoples.

Common collocations

• internecine war Adjective + noun

Borrowed from Latin internecīnus (“deadly”), from internecium (“a massacre, bloodbath; an eradication”) + -īnus. In Latin, the sememe 'between' was here not expressed by the prefix, it instead either had a somewhat emphatic meaning or meant "down, under", comparable to its use in other Latin terms related to death: see interficiō and intereō. The English current sense is thus a reanalysis of the Latin through English inter-.

Topics

External links

• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary
• Google Images