Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An act or event that provokes or is used to justify war.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A matter or occasion of war; an excuse or a reason for declaring war: as, the right of search claimed by Great Britain constituted a casus belli in 1812.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An
act seen asjustifying orcausing awar . - noun Plural form of
casus belli .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an event used to justify starting a war
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[New Latin cāsus bellī : Latin cāsus, occasion + Latin bellī, genitive of bellum, war.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Latin casus ("case") + belli ("of war").
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Examples
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Not because the casus belli for the war was that they oppress their women–but rather that the same medieval attitudes that led them to oppress women and behead people also led them to hate and kill us in the first place.
hogger10 commented on the word casus belli
good phrase
September 23, 2007