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feud

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Idioms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.03 sec.
feud, formalized private warfare, especially between family groups. The blood feud (see vendetta vendetta (vĕndĕt`ə) [Ital.,=vengeance], feud between members of two kinship groups to avenge a wrong done to a relative.
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) is characteristic of those societies in which central government either has not arisen or has decayed. In modern times the feud, outlawed in most countries, has persisted where public justice cannot be easily enforced and private means are a simpler recourse. A famous example is the 19th-century feud of the Hatfields and McCoys in the mountain regions of the southern United States. The frontier in U.S. history was also characterized by private justice and the feud.

Bibliography

See Waller, A. L., Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860–1900 (1988).


feud, feod
Feudal law land held in return for service


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I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over that sword.
Whether it was due to his feud with Stremov, or his misfortune with his wife, or simply that Alexey Alexandrovitch had reached his destined limits, it had become evident to everyone in the course of that year that his career was at an end.
Michael could not see them, save when he was being taken out or brought back, but he could smell them and hear them, and, in his loneliness, he even started a feud of snarling bickeringness with Pedro, the biggest of them who acted as clown in their turn.
 
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