internecine
adjective
Did you know?
Internecine comes from the Latin internecinus ("fought to the death" or "destructive"), which traces to the verb "necare" ("to kill") and the prefix inter-. ("Inter-" usually means "between" or "mutual" in Latin, but it can also indicate the completion of an action.) Internecine meant "deadly" when it appeared in English in the early 17th century, but when Samuel Johnson entered it in his dictionary almost a century later, he was apparently misled by "inter-" and defined the word as "endeavouring mutual destruction." Johnson's definition was carried into later dictionaries, and before long his sense was the dominant meaning of the word. "Internecine" developed the association with internal group conflict in the 20th century, and that's the most common sense today.
Examples of internecine in a Sentence
Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 15 Nov. 2024
Character development builds across the series, which means big moments of discovery and internecine power struggles have more oomph as time goes on.
—Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 9 Oct. 2024
After all the internecine squabbles, the true threat had revealed itself, just as in Game of Thrones.
—Rowland Manthorpe, WIRED, 28 Aug. 2017
For the first time, Cox and Pope both saw that the internecine battle appeared coordinated.
—Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica, 19 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for internecine 
Dictionary Entries Near internecine
Cite this Entry
“Internecine.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/internecine. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
internecine
adjective
Share