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feud

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feud

, feod
Feudal law land held in return for service
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

feud

relations of continuing mutual hostility between groups where one group has been wronged by the other (e.g. one of its number has been murdered) and retribution is sought. Usually different LINEAGE groups or clans are involved. Feuding relationships occur in situations of kin solidarity, in which an individual can rely on support from relatives. They occur particularly in societies (e.g. SEGMENTARY SOCIETIES) which lack central political or legal authority, but where the fear of being involved in a feud acts as a major deterrent against wrongdoing. A retaliatory killing may end a feud, but other resolutions, such as the payment of compensation, may also bring it to an end.
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000
Mentioned in
References in classic literature
"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills HIM; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the COUSINS chip in -- and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud.
I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp.
Pluck up your courage, and we'll let Townleys and MacNairs whistle their mouldy feuds down the wind while we sail southward in The Fair Lady.
The feuds of White Plume, however, had not been confined to the red men; he had much to say of brushes with bee hunters, a class of offenders for whom he seemed to cherish a particular abhorrence.
But when it is remembered that in Zarathustra we not only have the history of his most intimate experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs and the like, but that the very form in which they are narrated is one which tends rather to obscure than to throw light upon them, the difficulties which meet the reader who starts quite unprepared will be seen to be really formidable.
At the period of the tale, they dwelt in open hostility; national feuds passing from generation to generation.
Between this British company and the French merchants of Canada, feuds and contests arose about alleged infringements of territorial limits, and acts of violence and bloodshed occurred between their agents.
Scenes of drunkeness, brutality, and brawl were the consequence, in the Indian villages and around the trading houses; while bloody feuds took place between rival trading parties when they happened to encounter each other in the lawless depths of the wilderness.
And as to those mortal feuds which, in certain conjunctures, spread a conflagration through a whole nation, or through a very large proportion of it, proceeding either from weighty causes of discontent given by the government or from the contagion of some violent popular paroxysm, they do not fall within any ordinary rules of calculation.
A four-decade feud between relatives in Masiu and Poona-Bayabao towns of Lanao del Sur ended Wednesday, August 14, in a settlement witnessed by local government and military officials.
Sources claimed the Co Louth incident is linked to the feud but is not thought to be in retaliation.
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