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Internecine   /ɪntˈərnəsˌin/   Listen
Internecine

adjective
1.
(of conflict) within a group or organization.
2.
Characterized by bloodshed and carnage for both sides.






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"Internecine" Quotes from Famous Books



... congregations slumbered tranquilly, and everbody was satisfied. If the clergy squabbled amongst themselves, and with their churchwardens, their fellow-citizens were rather grateful to them than otherwise for varying the monotony, so that they were encouraged to wage their internecine combats to their hearts' content; and when these lapsed and they let each other alone, it was always interesting to see how they turned upon the bishop. But nobody was disturbed, for in such a sleepy old place—and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... had happened, and we were all in love with her,—hopelessly, resignedly so, and without internecine rancour, for she treated us, indiscriminately, with a serene, impartial, tolerant, derision; but we were savagely, luridly, jealous and suspicious of all new-comers and of all outsiders. If we could not win her, no one else should; and we formed ourselves round her in a ring of fire. Oh, the ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... question Mary's legitimacy was to throw open the question of succession to half a dozen ambitious competitors. It was, too probably, to involve England at Henry's death in another civil war of the Roses, and in all the internecine horrors which were still rankling in the memories of men; and probably, also, to bring down a French or Scotch invasion. There was then too good reason, as Mr. Froude shows at length, for Wolsey's assertion to John Cassalis— 'If his Holiness, which God forbid, shall show himself unwilling to listen ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley

... a question of production only, there is perfect harmony. Both unite in agreeing that to produce as much as possible is for the interest of each. The conflict begins with distribution. It is no longer a war of one nation with another; it is internecine war, destroying the foundations of our own defences, and making enemies of those ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... less from their depredations than imported ones. The ants hardly touched the local forests, but they stripped young plantations of orange, coffee, and mango trees stark naked. He ingeniously accounts for this curious fact by supposing that an internecine struggle has long been going on in the countries inhabited by the Sauebas between the ants and the forest trees. Those trees that best resisted the ants, owing either to some unpleasant taste or to hardness of foliage, have in the long run survived destruction; but those which were suited for the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... great battle field and the internecine strife of fighting Africans is in a measure responsible for the plight of the Negro race in the world, as a union of forces could have the better halted alien aggression. But in America the Negro was taught the Gospel of peace. The singing of the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... a faithful ally in our operations against Kabul, for even as it was, the tardy knowledge of that war by the Kafirs sufficed to bring thousands into the field ready to be let loose on their hereditary foe, whilst it put a stop, at any rate temporarily, to the internecine feuds, which, as much as Muslim encroachments, reduced the number of Kafirs. He hoped that the visit of Mr. McNair and of the native Christian missionaries recently in Kafiristan, might be another step towards the ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... either in the simplicity of the country or the refinements of the town. Originally their political and municipal system was organized on the lines of a representative republic. True, it is on record that these well-governed towns often waged an internecine warfare; but in spite of this it had been their invariable custom from time immemorial, even in times of strife, to keep the trade routes open and to allow their own and foreign merchants to go their ways unharmed. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... breaches of the Seventh Commandment, and of sins connected with them, which a writer is now hardly permitted to mention. An 'evil and adulterous generation' has been in all ages and countries the one marked out for intestine and internecine strife. That description is always applicable to a revolutionary generation; whether or not it also comes under the class of a superstitious one, 'seeking after a sign from heaven,' only half believing ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... our divinity. In our historical and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have feud or favor with no one,—save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war. This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels No cheating here,—we thought it ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... for several weeks. Probably ten thousand Huguenots were slain, including Coligny himself. But the deed was a blunder as well as a crime. The Huguenots took up arms to defend themselves, and France again experienced all the horrors of internecine strife. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... period two huge Mahommedan rebellions, besides the cataclysmic Taiping rising which lasted ten years and is supposed to have destroyed the unbelievable total of one hundred million persons. The empire, torn by internecine warfare, surrendered many of its essential prerogatives to foreigners, and by accepting the principle of extraterritoriality prepared the road ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... with God—that is the foundation of all—then peace with ourselves, so that our inmost nature need no longer be torn in pieces by contending emotions, 'I dare not' waiting upon 'I would,' and 'I ought' and 'I will' being in continual and internecine conflict; but heart and will, and calmed conscience, and satisfied desires, and pure affections, and lofty emotions being all drawn together into one great wave by the attraction of His love, as the moon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the emergence of the Puritans from the chaos of internecine church squabbles, the determined raising of the voice of the people in the Long Parliament, where King and people finally came to an open clash in the impeachment of the King's most devoted minister, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, by Pym, the great leader ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... Fierce internecine wars were now being waged between the tribes of the locality, which made any thought of progress, so long as they lasted, an impossibility. Speke, having successfully endeavoured to negotiate a peace between the chief Mouwa and the Arabs of the region, resolved upon the bold enterprise of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... ample causes and provocation for retaliation, and the most desperate enterprises and efforts to recover lawful rights and hard-earned property. Where these Confiscating Acts had been most sweeping and severe, as in the case of South Carolina, and the two parties nearly equal, this internecine war against life and property was the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... an apparently internecine conflict is raging between the British Empire and Germany, a more detailed comparison of the vital statistics of the two countries will be read with interest. In England and Wales the birth-rate culminated in 1876 at a little over 36, after slowly rising from ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... have done effective service, yet we honor him for the boldness with which he faced the scholars with his Latin works. He threw an apple of discord amongst their ranks which has served, in a constantly increasing manner, to divide and distract their attention. The result has been a constant internecine war in the Church, by ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... Achilles, their king, to the Trojan War.] covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I had ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine [Footnote: Internecine: mutually destructive.] war; the red republicans on the one hand and the black imperialists on the other hand. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... of Toulouse is detestable, saturated with blood and perfidy; and the ancient custom of the Floral Games, grafted upon all sorts of internecine traditions, seems, with its false pastoralism, its mock chivalry, its display of fine feelings, to set off rather than to mitigate these horrors. The society was founded in the fourteenth century, and it has held annual meetings ever ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... living in the Garden of Eden in perfect innocency, common property amply satisfied his sinless and unselfish moral character; that by the Fall lust and greed overthrew this idyllic state, and led to a continued condition of internecine strife, and the supremacy of might; that experience gradually brought men to realise that their only hope towards peaceful intercourse lay in the actual division of property, and the establishment of a system of ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... I found at close range on his native heath, wearing the mantle of the departed Botha, carrying on a Government with a minority, and with the shadow of an internecine war brooding on the horizon, was the same serene, clear-thinking strategist who had raised his voice in the Allied Councils. Then the enemy was the German and the task was to destroy the menace of militarism. Now it was his own unreconstructed ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... bas-reliefs of the temple of Khonsu, or on the columns of the hypostyle hall at Karnak. Wood carving maintained its level during a somewhat longer period. The admirable statuettes of priests and children at Turin date from the Twentieth Dynasty. The advent of Sheshonk and the internecine strife of the provinces at length completed the ruin of Thebes, and the school which had produced so ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... turvy. The Motor Maids were quarreling among themselves and there was mystery in the air. Their happy little kingdom was being destroyed by internecine wars, and for what reason, Billie could not understand. It was inevitable that Mary and Elinor would come over to her side, now, that is, if Nancy persisted ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... "remembrance," he must either have concealed his convictions or he would have forfeited his throne; if he had been a stationary bigot, the Reformation might have waited for a century, and would have been conquered only by an internecine war. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... but a small portion of the sufferers. Besides those actually captured, thousands are killed and die of their wounds and famine; thousands more perish in internecine war waged for slaves with their own clansmen and neighbours. The numerous skeletons seen among rocks and woods, by the pools, and on the paths of the wilderness, attest the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... present view of the English Church appears to be incompatible with that fierce and internecine hostility to the claim upon the loyalty of her children which is really essential to clear the act of perverting others from her ranks from the plainest guilt of schism. It is not merely that the nobleness and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... should be brought under a vigorous and progressive Government, able and willing to develop the vast trade resources at their disposal, than that they should decimate themselves and ruin their country by perpetual internecine strife. Whether it will be to the interest of England in a political point of view that Russia should attain the commanding position which the possession of any part of China would undoubtedly secure her, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... movement in the direction of weakening ecclesiastical interference with civil life. But the bond of a common enemy was the only real tie between the humanist and the protestant; their alliance was bound to be of short duration, and, sooner or later, to be replaced by internecine warfare. The goal of the humanists, whether they were aware of it or not, was the attainment of the complete intellectual freedom of the antique philosopher, than which nothing could be more abhorrent to a Luther, a Calvin, a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... ruins of Rome. There was no precedent to follow; so the two Europeans had made their way out to the East, and to the one town in it where quiet still reigned. With the disappearance of Greek Christianity there had also vanished the last remnants of internecine war in Christendom; and by a kind of tacit consent of the world, Christians were allowed a moderate liberty in Palestine. Russia, which now held the country as a dependency, had sufficient sentiment left to leave it alone; it was true that the holy places had been desecrated, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... interesting questions are opened up by these simple facts. How did these three floras get each to its present place? Where did each come from? How did it get past or through the other, till each set of plants, after long internecine competition, settled itself down in the sheet of land most congenial to it? And when did each come hither? Which is the oldest? Will any one tell me whether the healthy floras of the moors, or the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... Slovenia, was the most prosperous and industrialized area, with a per capita output perhaps one-third above the Yugoslav average. Croatia faces considerable economic problems stemming from: the legacy of longtime communist mismanagement of the economy; damage during the internecine fighting to bridges, factories, power lines, buildings, and houses; the large refugee and displaced population, both Croatian and Bosnian; and the disruption of economic ties. Western aid and investment, especially in the tourist and oil industries, would help restore ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... that man mad before you have done." "What is it to you how I drive him?" Camilla had answered in her fury. Then Arabella had again shrugged her shoulders and walked away. Between Camilla and her mother, too, there had come to be an almost internecine quarrel on a collateral point. Camilla was still carrying on a vast arrangement which she called the preparation of her trousseau, but which both Mrs. French and Bella regarded as a spoliation of the domestic nest, for the proud purposes of one of the younger birds. And this had grown so fearfully ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... punishment swift and drastic: a prince who broke faith deserved no pity. His offer of six batteries was "an atonement" both cynical and inadequate for the "ambush" by which French and English blood had been spilt. Similarly the internecine strife of 2 December and the subsequent proceedings against the Venizelists were depicted as a wanton hunt of harmless and law-abiding citizens. Day by day the stream of calumny, assiduously fed from ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... possible way these writers of articles tried to injure each other with those in power; they brought reciprocal accusations of lukewarm zeal; they invented the most treacherous ways of getting rid of a rival. There had been none of this internecine warfare among the Liberals; they were too far from power, too hopelessly out of favor; and Lucien, amid the inextricable tangle of ambitions, had neither the courage to draw sword and cut the knot, or the patience to unravel it. He could not be the Beaumarchais, the Aretino, the Freron ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... was less in the manner of his nominal father, King Henry, than reminiscent of Count Manuel of Poictesme, whose portraits certainly the Prince resembled to an embarrassing extent. Either way, the barons' power was demolished, there would be no more internecine war; and spurred by the unaccustomed idleness, Prince Edward began to think of the foreign girl he had not seen since the day he wedded her. She would be a woman by this, and it was befitting that he claim his ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... wonderful and beautiful how a man and his dog will stick to one another, through thick and thin. Butler tells of an undivided Indian tribe, in the Far North which was all but exterminated by an internecine feud over a dog that belonged to one man and was killed by his neighbor; and among ourselves we have lawsuits, fights, and deadly feuds, all pointing the same old moral, 'Love ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... natives, her present house—was a district regarded with fear by the Duke and Creek Town natives, and practically unknown to Europeans. It was given, as most of the surrounding districts still are, to killing at funerals, ordeal by poison, and perpetual internecine wars. Many of these evil customs she has stamped out, and Okoyong rarely gives trouble to its nominal rulers, the Consuls, in Old Calabar, and trade passes freely through it down to the seaports. This instance of what one white can ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... considerable light upon the question of the Rights; and, until at any rate the true Might has been ascertained by this crucial test, one may without half-heartedness admit that both of the opposing Rights, the conservative and the disruptive, are genuine rights, mutually antagonistic and internecine, but neither disproved by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... penetrate further into the matter—or, to be more exact, as we ascend into the higher regions of La Butte—we find the elect, who form so stout a phalanx against the Philistinism of the Louvre, themselves subdivided into numerous sections, and distraught with internecine feuds concerning the principle of the art which they pursue with all the vehemence that Veronese green and cadmium yellow are capable of. From ten at night till two in the morning the brasseries of the Butte are in session. Ah! the interminable bocks and the reek of the cigars, until at last ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... members of a tribe; but as the people speaking a common language increase in number and come to have conflicting interests, the linguistic tie has often proved to be an insufficient bond of union. In the case of our Indian tribes feuds and internecine conflicts were common between members of the same linguistic family. In fact, it is probable that a very large number of the dialects into which Indian languages are split originated as the result of internecine strife. Factions, divided and separated from the parent body, ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... personal knowledge of the immense superiority of the Greek soldiery and the Greek discipline over those of the Eastern nations. Accordingly, he planned to obtain the services of a large contingent of Greek mercenaries, who had become the more readily available since the internecine struggle between the two leading states of Hellas had been brought to an end. The term "Anabasis," or "going up," applies properly to the advance into the interior; the retreat, with which the work is mainly concerned, is the "Katabasis." The author writes his record in the third ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... peaceful possession, all the internecine jealousies, the tribal feuds, and old hatreds burst forth, and the first fifty years of Moorish rule in Spain was a period of internal strife and disorder—Arabs and Moors were jealously trying to undermine each other; while the Arabs themselves were torn by factions ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... Marcion taught that the God of the New Testament was a distinct being from the God of the Old, whom he identified with the God of Nature; that these two Gods were not only distinct but antagonistic; that there was an irreconcilable, internecine feud between them; and that Jesus Christ came from the good God to rescue men from the God of Nature and of the Jews. This was the head and front of his offending; and consequently a common charge against him with ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... the malignant evil of internecine strife Universal Good is rising with an awakened nation's cry—a cry for freedom and release from the ever-lengthening chains of pernicious interests and obsolete institutions. The moment of release is at hand: That pyschological ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... shrubbery, and perhaps inaccessible save through the devious paths cunningly planned to secure immunity from attack. These natural defences were supplemented with a series of forts as a further protection from the incursions of the natives. The internecine wars so fiercely waged by the inhabitants of the African East Coast frequently brought the vanquished to these "villages" to secure protection—a safety usually given in exchange for practical slavery in tilling the ground and ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... state that political exigencies demand emergentistical promptitude, and while the United States is indissoluble in conception and invisible in intent, treason and internecine disagreement have ruptured the consanguinity ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... worship. The dissenting Presbyterians assumed the name of Covenanters. Hamilton was almost the centre of the movement. The Covenanters met, and the King's forces were ordered to disperse them. Hence the internecine war that followed. There were Naesmyths on both sides— Naesmyths for the King, and Naesmyths for ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... the settlement of the country by the whites rather difficult. Not at first—but later. At first they welcomed the whites, and were eager to trade with them—particularly for muskets; for their pastime was internecine war, and they greatly preferred the white man's weapons to their own. War was their pastime—I use the word advisedly. They often met and slaughtered each other just for a lark, and when there was no quarrel. The author of "Old New Zealand" mentions a case where a victorious army could have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... about the methods of his administration and formed a very high opinion of his ability, for he says that to this one chief the people owe their present unity and orderliness; that before his time the whole island was in a state of internecine war: murder was frequent, and property unsafe. Now their social condition, according to the Doctor's account, is a model to Europe, let alone Africa. Civil wars have been abolished, disputes between villages being referred to arbitration, and murder is swiftly and surely punished. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... of a much stronger nature. He was not exactly the man to overlook his own slighted claims, or to forgive the preference shown to another. Dr. Proudie was playing Venus to his Juno, and he was prepared to wage an internecine war against the owner of the wished-for apple, and all his satellites, private chaplains, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... Lords and Commons ordinances; Nor for the church, nor for church-lands, To get them in their own no hands; Nor evil counsellors to bring To justice that seduce the King; 770 Nor for the worship of us men, Though we have done as much for them. Th' AEgyptians worshipp'd dogs, and for Their faith made internecine war. Others ador'd a rat, and some 775 For that church suffer'd martyrdom. The Indians fought for the truth Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth, And many, to defend that faith, Fought it out mordicus to death. 780 But no beast ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... to soothe, Sometimes ruffled brows to smooth, For (I much regret to say) Tippytoe and Pittypat Sometimes interrupt their play With an internecine spat; Fie, for shame; to quarrel ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... fact appear that the Constitution as at present framed is fatal to all direct taxation. Any law for the collection of direct taxation levied under the Constitution would produce internecine quarrel between the Western States and those which border on the Atlantic. The Western States would not submit to the taxation. The difficulty which one here feels is that which always attends an attempt at finality in political arrangements. One would be inclined to ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... are among the greatest which England has conferred upon India. "Pax Britanica" is equally known and loved today in India and in the British Isles. From time immemorial India had been torn asunder, not only by internecine wars, but also by numerous attacks from the peoples of other countries. India has always been a prey both to the decimating wars of her own unjust and ambitious tyrants, and mutually antagonistic castes and tribes; she has also been the easy victim of any hardy, enlightened, ambitious ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones



Words linked to "Internecine" :   bloody, internal



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