Feud

How to spell feud

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce feud

What does feud mean?

1. nounA prolonged and bitter quarrel or state of hostility, often between families, groups, or individuals.
2. verbTo engage in a prolonged, bitter quarrel with another person or group.

Feud in a sentence

• noun

  The two families kept their bitter feud alive for three generations.

• verb

  The siblings continued to feud over the contents of their late mother's will.

• noun

  A dispute over the boundary fence escalated into a lasting feud between the neighbours.

• verb

  The two departments tend to feud whenever the annual budget is divided.

Where does feud come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word traces back to a Germanic root *faihida, meaning 'enmity' or 'hostility', which is closely related to the ancestor of the modern word 'foe'. It came into Middle English as 'fede' or 'feide' partly through Old French 'feide' (a quarrel between families), itself borrowed from Frankish Germanic speech. The original idea was a state of lasting hostility, especially the obligation of one family to avenge a wrong done to another, which is exactly the blood-quarrel sense the word still carries. The odd modern spelling, with its 'eu' standing for a 'yoo' sound, only settled in around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; earlier forms had no 'u' at all, and the inserted vowel is the main reason the word looks harder than it sounds. It is worth noting that the 'feud' of 'feudal' is a completely separate word, drawn from Medieval Latin 'feudum' for a landholding, so the shared shape is pure coincidence.

How the word is built

• feud (from Germanic *faihida: enmity, hostility); a single unanalysable root in modern English