Faction

How to spell faction

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce faction

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does faction mean?

1. nounA small dissenting or self-interested group within a larger organisation or party.

Faction in a sentence

• A rebel faction within the board blocked the merger.

• The union split into a moderate faction and a militant one.

Where does faction come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Faction comes from the Latin factio, which meant a making, a doing, or a group of people acting together, and which derived from facere, the everyday Latin verb meaning 'to do' or 'to make'. In Roman use factio already carried the flavour of a political clique or a team, famously the rival teams of charioteers in the circus who each had their own backers. English took the word in the early 1500s, partly through French faction, and it quickly settled into its modern sense of a self-interested group splitting off from a larger body. The same facere root is hidden in a remarkable family of English words, including fact, factory, manufacture, and even fashion, so the unstressed 'fact' at the start is a useful spelling anchor. A much later, separate use coins faction as a blend of 'fact' and 'fiction' for storytelling that mixes the two, a happy accident given the original 'fact' root. The trap for writers is simply the '-tion' ending pronounced 'shun', which tempts a 'sh' spelling that the word never had.

How the word is built

• fact- (from Latin facere: to do, to make)
• -ion (noun suffix, action or result)