Meaning
A prolonged, hostile exchange of arguments conducted in public - through statements, interviews, posts, or print - rather than by force. The phrase implies real antagonism and escalating rhetoric between two people, organisations, or states, but stops short of physical conflict, and it is a staple of news reporting on stand-offs of every kind. Almost always reportorial in register; the phrase frames an exchange as newsworthy conflict rather than mere disagreement. Regional use: General English; strongest in journalism.
Origin
A transparent metaphor from the military vocabulary of 'war' applied to verbal conflict, following the older 'war of X' pattern (war of attrition, war of nerves). Print evidence assembled from searchable archives shows it established by the nineteenth century: a 1912 article in the Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California described Civil War-era Los Angeles as having seen 'principally a war of words', and later historians applied the same phrase retrospectively to the seventeenth-century pamphlet war between the Gomarists and the Arminians in the Dutch Republic. Cambridge marks it standard journalistic currency, especially for political and commercial disputes. No authoritative first citation is available in the freely consulted sources, so the dating is reported conservatively.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- verbal war
- war of words
- wars of words
Usage Examples
- The war of words between the airline and the pilots' union escalated from press statements to duelling open letters.
- Diplomats moved to dampen the war of words before it hardened into something no one could retract.
- What began as a footnote dispute became a decade-long war of words conducted in journals and conference keynotes.