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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

a political party that has suffered because of bitter internecine rivalries

Recent Examples on the Web The story chronicles the rise and fall of the onetime Wall Street powerhouse Lehman Brothers, covering nearly two centuries of bristling ambition, greed, economic history and internecine family warfare. — Eben Shapiro, Time, "The 10 Best Theater Performances of 2019," 1 Dec. 2019 These fighters—many of them jihadists—hoarded food while civilians starved, murdered those suspected of disloyalty, and waged internecine gun battles in the streets. — Robert F. Worth, The New York Review of Books, "And the Oscar Goes to… A Simplified Story of Syria’s Civil War," 6 Feb. 2020 The party's decades-long internecine battle over Britain's membership of the E.U. precipitated the 2016 Brexit vote. — NBC News, "Goodbye, Europe. After years of Brexit turmoil, Britain finally leaves the E.U.," 30 Jan. 2020 The show, as concerns the internecine politics of Hollywood itself, also whiffed of regression: Gone was the anger that had animated the 2018 show. — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, "Harvey Weinstein Haunted the Golden Globes," 6 Jan. 2020 He and John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow Chancellor and the architect of its economic policies, are veterans of strikes and internecine Labour disputes about wealth creation and the role of the state that go back to the early seventies. — Sam Knight, The New Yorker, "Can Jeremy Corbyn Lose the British Election and Still Win?," 26 Nov. 2019 Since Trump has not come through on his promise of a big plan, internecine skirmishes among 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls have largely driven the health care debate in recent months. — BostonGlobe.com, "Meantime the uninsured rate has gone up on Trump’s watch, rising in 2018 for the first time in nearly a decade to 8.5 percent of the population, or 27.5 million people, according to the Census Bureau.," 31 Dec. 2019 Fearing the sort of internecine strife for which the SPD is known, Esken and Walter-Borjans are now going out of their way to offer an olive branch to Scholz. — Washington Post, "Olaf Scholz Could Be the First Casualty of Germany’s Crisis," 3 Dec. 2019 Even within political factions, discipline is rare, and internecine struggle is routine. — Simon Shuster / Kyiv, Time, "Trump's Call For Investigations Finds New Support Among Russian Allies in Ukraine," 19 Nov. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'internecine.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.