HOSTILITIES • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Hostilities

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/hɑstˈɪlətiz/ Listen

noun

Hostility n. (pl. hostilities)

1.

State of being hostile; public or private enemy; unfriendliness; animosity. "Hostility being thus suspended with France."

2.

An act of an open enemy; a hostile deed; especially in the plural, acts of warfare; attacks of an enemy. See hostilities "He who proceeds to wanton hostility, often provokes an enemy where he might have a friend."

Synonyms: Animosity; enmity; opposition; violence; aggression; contention; warfare.

hostilities n. pl.

1.

A legal state created by a declaration of war and ended by official declaration, during which the international rules of war apply.

Synonyms: war, state of war, hot war. "We have showed ourselves generous adversaries... and have carried on even our hostilities with humanity."

2.

Acts of overt warfare.

Synonyms: belligerency.

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Etymology of 'Hostilities'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hostilities" Quotes from Famous Books

... means of an unfrequented road, opened communications between Lorraine and upper Alsatia. This position had been one of some importance in the Middle Ages, at the time when the Vosges were beset with partisans from the two countries, always ready to renew border hostilities, the everlasting plague of all frontiers. Upon a cliff overlooking the village were situated the ruins which had given the village its name; it owed it to the birds of prey [falcons, in French: 'faucons'], the habitual guests of the perpendicular rocks. To render ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... but finally nodded her head.... She had been in Paris many times. The outbreak of the war had found her living in the Grand Hotel. Fortunately, two days before the rupture of hostilities, she had received news enabling her to avoid being made prisoner in a concentration camp.... And she did not wish to say more. She was verbose and frank in the relation of her far-distant experiences, but the memory of the more ...

— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... made so swiftly wide. News of it comes from Japan, from Porto Rico, from Africa, from places where in old days news of hostilities might not travel ...

— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... clump of evergreens, a lighted cottage presented itself, and Miss St. John sprang lightly up the steps, pushed open the hall door, and cried through the open entrance to a cosey apartment, "No occasion for hostilities, papa. I have made a capture that gives the promise of whist not only this evening but also for several more ...

— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... bound by many strategic threats and declarations, and dominated by the idea of getting and securing advantages. It is inevitable that a settlement made in a conference of belligerents alone will be shortsighted, harsh, limited by merely incidental necessities, and obsessed by the idea of hostilities and rivalries continuing perennially; it will be a trading of advantages for subsequent attacks. It will be a settlement altogether different in effect as well as in spirit from a world settlement made primarily to establish a new phase in the ...

— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

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