schism
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A split or separation within a group or organization, usually caused by discord.
Pronunciation
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A split or separation within a group or organization, typically caused by discord.
religion
A formal division or split within a religious body.
Catholicism
A split within Christianity whereby a group no longer recognizes the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church, but shares essentially the same beliefs with the Church of Rome. In other words, a political split without the introduction of heresy.
verb
transitive
To split, divide (a group or organization).
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A split or separation within a group or organization, typically caused by discord.
Used this way, schism is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use schism
- “Another schism like that and they will wind up in bankruptcy.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The period from 1378 to 1417 during which there were two papacies in the Roman Catholic Church, one in Rome and one in Avignon.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.