English

Alternative forms

Noun

enmity ‎(plural enmities)

1. The quality of being an enemy; hostile or unfriendly disposition.
   • 2005, Plato, Sophist. Translation by Lesley Brown. 242e.

     Some later Muses from Ionia and Sicily reckoned it safest to weave together both versions and say that that which is is both many and one, held together by both enmity and amity.

2. A state or feeling of opposition, hostility, hatred or animosity.
   • 1945 May, George Orwell, chapter 1, in Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, London: Secker & Warburg, OCLC 3655473:

     I merely repeat, remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways.

Quotations

• 1611, Bible (KJV), Genesis 3:15:

  And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Synonyms

• enemyship, hostility, enemyhood, antagonism, animosity, rancor, antipathy, animus, foeship

Antonyms

• amity

Translations

References

• enmity in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• enmity in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• Notes:

1. 1 2 3 “enmity” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]