Wiktionary

enmity

English

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Alternative forms

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Variant spellings[1]
(tetrasyllabic)
(trisyllabic)

Etymology

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From Middle English enemyte, from Old French enemisté, ennemistié, from Late Latin, Vulgar Latin *inimīcitās, *inimīcitātem, from Latin inimīcus (“enemy”); cognates: French inimitié, Portuguese inimizade, Spanish enemistad.[1] Equivalent to enemy +‎ -ity.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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enmity (countable and uncountable, plural enmities)

  1. The quality of being an enemy; hostile or unfriendly disposition.
    • 2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 242e:
      Some later Muses from Ionia and Sicily reckoned it safest to weave together both versions and say that that which is both many and one, held together by both enmity and amity.
  2. A state or feeling of opposition, hostility, hatred or animosity.
    • 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:
      I merely repeat, remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways.
    • 2018 August 7, Alexis C. Madrigal, “Wikipedia, the Last Bastion of Shared Reality”, in The Atlantic‎[1]:
      Maybe only a system that can contain the deep enmity between people who spell the metal aluminum and those who spell it aluminium is up to the task of preserving our fragile democratic institutions.

Quotations

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Synonyms

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Antonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 “enmity” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]

Anagrams

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