CIVIL WAR

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does civil war mean? 

• CIVIL WAR (noun)
  The noun CIVIL WAR has 1 sense:

1. a war between factions in the same country

  Familiarity information: CIVIL WAR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CIVIL WAR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A war between factions in the same country

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("civil war" is a kind of...):

war; warfare (the waging of armed conflict against an enemy)

Instance hyponyms:

American Civil War; United States Civil War; War between the States (civil war in the United States between the North and the South; 1861-1865)

English Civil War (civil war in England between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists under Charles I; 1644-1648)

Spanish Civil War (civil war in Spain in which Franco succeeded in overthrowing the republican government; during the war Spain became a battleground for fascists and socialists from all countries; 1936-1939)

 Context examples 

How, then, can England come in, especially when we have stirred her up such a devil’s brew of Irish civil war, window-breaking Furies, and God knows what to keep her thoughts at home.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He said, “the Yahoos were known to hate one another, more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned was, the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves. He had therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and by that invention conceal many of our deformities from each other, which would else be hardly supportable. But he now found he had been mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described them. For if,” said he, “you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself; and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance from each other: that if a cow died of age or accident, before a Houyhnhnm could secure it for his own Yahoos, those in the neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had invented. At other times, the like battles have been fought between the Yahoos of several neighbourhoods, without any visible cause; those of one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next, before they are prepared. But if they find their project has miscarried, they return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil war among themselves.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)