Other Word Forms
- factionalism noun
- factionalist noun
- interfactional adjective
- unfactional adjective
Etymology
Origin of factional
Explanation
Something that's factional is broken into smaller parts. A government that's divided into opposing groups faces factional bickering that can make it hard to accomplish much of anything. Factional comes from faction and its Latin root, factionem, "political party or class of people." Your huge family might be split into factions that are bitterly divided about where to go for dinner while on vacation, with nightly factional bickering over pizza versus seafood. Any group that includes smaller, highly opinionated groups within it can be described as factional.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
We’re talking about an enormous bureaucratic organization with 2,000 years of weird and troubled history, whose massive internal contradictions and bitter factional disputes are only partly visible to outsiders.
From Salon • Apr. 5, 2026
Ordained a priest in 2002, she became the first female Bishop of London in 2018, only four years after the church began allowing women bishops after years of bitter factional wrangling.
From Barron's • Mar. 25, 2026
Rodríguez’s tone shift highlighted the balance that her shaky interim leadership is testing out as she tries to withstand U.S. pressure while keeping the country’s so-called revolutionary government from dissolving into factional infighting.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 6, 2026
What followed was decades of insurgency, factional splits and ceasefires.
From BBC • Oct. 27, 2025
For two years now, the Taliban had been making their way toward Kabul, taking cities from the Mujahideen, ending factional war wherever they’d settled.
From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
