internecine

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The Word of the Day for April 29 is:

internecine   \in-ter-NESS-een\   adjective
     1 : marked by slaughter : deadly; especially : mutually destructive 
    *2 : of, relating to, or involving conflict within a group

Example sentence:
     When the three brothers took over the family business together, it didn't 
take long for the internecine feuding to begin.

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 1663, 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.  

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.





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