hostilities
- 1Warlike acts carried out between opposing nations or armed forces.
Hostilities erupted along the disputed frontier within hours of the failed talks.
The treaty called for an immediate cessation of hostilities between the warring states.
Similarfighting, warfare, combat, conflict
Oppositepeace
Note
Here the word lives only in the plural. It takes a plural verb (hostilities have ceased), and a single act of war is never called a hostility. Its steadiest partner is cessation, the phrase of ceasefires and peace settlements: Ian Oliver's War & Peace in the Balkans (2005) has NATO troops sent to supervise the cessation of hostilities. Hostilities break out, resume or end, but they are always treated as one collective whole.
- 2Plural of hostility.
Old hostilities resurfaced the moment the two leaders met again.
Years of unspoken hostilities finally came to the surface during the meeting.
Note
Plurals of this kind count hostile acts one by one, building on hostility as a countable noun. Hostility in its sense of a state of being hostile is uncountable and has no plural, so old hostilities points to particular acts of antagonism rather than a general mood. Context separates it from the wartime meaning: personal or political friction here, armed fighting there.
hostilities is a form of hostility
hostility, noun: The condition or attitude of being hostile; deep-seated opposition or unfriendliness toward a person or thing. Full entry
- Forms
- hostilityhostilities plural
- Spelling
- hostility → hostilities: change y to i, add -es
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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