SCHISM

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does schism mean? 

• SCHISM (noun)
  The noun SCHISM has 2 senses:

1. division of a group into opposing factions

2. the formal separation of a church into two churches or the withdrawal of one group over doctrinal differences

  Familiarity information: SCHISM used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SCHISM (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Division of a group into opposing factions

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

schism; split

Context example:

another schism like that and they will wind up in bankruptcy

Hypernyms ("schism" is a kind of...):

division (the act or process of dividing)

Derivation:

schismatic; schismatical (of or relating to or involved in or characteristic of schism)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The formal separation of a church into two churches or the withdrawal of one group over doctrinal differences

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("schism" is a kind of...):

breach; break; falling out; rift; rupture; severance (a personal or social separation (as between opposing factions))

Instance hyponyms:

Great Schism (the period from 1378 to 1417 during which there were two papacies in the Roman Catholic Church, one in Rome and one in Avignon)

Derivation:

schismatic (of or relating to or involved in or characteristic of schism)

 Context examples 

But I confess, that, after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the state; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, whether I was a whig or tory?

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

There are old fops still lurking in the corners of Arthur’s or of White’s who can remember Tregellis’s dictum, that a cravat should be so stiffened that three parts of the length could be raised by one corner, and the painful schism which followed when Lord Alvanley and his school contended that a half was sufficient.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

During the course of these troubles, the emperors of Blefusca did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Alcoran).

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