The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style_5

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The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style_5 internecine 191of the phrase “according to Mr. John- tence from the biography could beson,” it tends to apply only to the “word rewritten this way:preferred” phrase. And the clause aboutphotographs is almost a non sequitur.) The prosecutor’s arguments did notSo the story was revised for a later edi- foreshadow his future philosophy.tion: There seemed to be nothing in the controversy about. . . . “Vandalism” was the word pre- ferred by Martin D. Franks, executive director of the committee, to describe The latter quotation from the book is last night’s incident, according to unwieldy and obscure, somehow tying Mark Johnson, the campaign com- professional memberships to the cliché mittee’s press secretary. . . . about success and tacking on a quota- What he described as “sensitive tion with still another idea. A rescue at- files” were still safely under lock and tempt would be futile. key, he said. INTERNECINE. Internecine (pro-The revised story (saying nothing about nounced inter-NIECE-sin, among otherphotographs) is an improvement. (But ways) is a useful adjective in the sense of“What he described as” is unnecessary, mutually destructive. It comes from theinasmuch as “sensitive files” is in quota- Latin internecinus, meaning murderous.tion marks and the sentence ends with A word so derived should be expected to“he said.”) bear the concept of deadliness. Indeed The passages below are from a biog- internecine originally meant character-raphy. Nothing but thorough recasting ized by bloodshed or slaughter.of the sentences could help them. It came to mean deadly to both adver- saries in an armed conflict. This is a use- In terms of the prosecutor’s future ful interpretation, for no other single philosophy, there seemed not to be word expresses the idea. one word in the controversy about the Still later, it was given another twist. freedom of the press provided under Evidently assuming that the first six let- the First Amendment. ters came from internal, some began ap- plying internecine to internal conflicts, In terms of professional memberships, e.g., “America’s internecine struggle of moreover, nothing succeeded like suc- the 1860s.” cess, as Black himself noted in an in- Now we often find the element of terview published after his death—“I deadliness, the essence of internecine, was trying a lot of cases against cor- slighted or forgotten altogether and the porations, jury cases, and I found out word serving merely as a synonym for that all the corporation lawyers were internal in connection with verbal, polit- in the Klan. . . .” ical, or other harmless disagreements within a group.Sticking an “in terms of” into a sentence In a TV forum, a newspaper publisheris no replacement for clear thinking. No was discussing South Africa’s leadership:one can be expected to speak in terms ofa future philosophy or otherwise foreseethe future. (Besides, there cannot be one Botha and his successor, de Klerk, areword about press freedom; it takes at apparently having internecine war-least two words.) The first sample sen- fare.192 interrogative sentenceThey were not actually shooting at each into. (“Put the dishes in [or “into”] theother; they simply disagreed on policy. cupboard.”) But idiom dictates the com ...