Word of the Day Archive
Monday August 20, 2007
faction \FAK-shuhn\ , noun:
1. A usually contentious or self-seeking group within a larger group, party, government, etc.
2. Party strife and intrigue; internal dissension.
For most of his colleagues, Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, who had succeeded Khrushchev as First (later General) Secretary, was a far more reassuring figure -- affable, lightweight and patient in reconciling opposing factions, though skillful in outmaneuvering his political rivals.
-- Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield
Leaders of the party's reform faction, decisively defeated for top posts, have not heeded the call for post-election unity.
-- "El Salvador: Orthodox Faction Holds on to Power in the FMLN", NotiCen, December 6, 2001
As Madison wrote in Federalist no. 10, the purpose of the Constitution was to constrain special interest politics, or what he called "the violence of faction."
-- James T. Bennett and Thomas J. Di Lorenzo, CancerScam
While Britannia Triumphans opened with a scene in which rebellious citizens of past reigns are dispelled by Heroic Virtue, faction, disorder and rebellion were much harder to deal with in British society.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
Faction comes from Latin factio, faction-, from the past participle of facere, "to do, to make."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for faction
