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  1. casus belli love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. An act or event that provokes or is used to justify war.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. 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.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An act seen as justifying or causing a war.
  2. n. Plural form of casus belli.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. an event or combination of events which is a cause war, or may be alleged as a justification of war.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. an event used to justify starting a war

Etymologies

  1. From Latin casus ("case") + belli ("of war"). (Wiktionary)
  2. New Latin cāsus bellī : Latin cāsus, occasion + Latin bellī, genitive of bellum, war. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “Then they sat down to a three-cornered game of 'cut-throat,' -- a proceeding which did away with all casus belli for future hostilities, and permitted the victor to depart on a most important mission.”

    THE PRIESTLY PREROGATIVE

  • “In an audience with the Emperor, after Walewski had ingeniously tried to excuse Austria for exercising her “rights” over her ex-subjects, Cavour burst out with the declaration that if he had 150,000 men at his disposal he would make it a casus belli with Austria that very day.”

    Cavour

  • “But remember, we want to invade when we want to invade; I don't want any single colossal casus belli that commits us before we are ready.”

    Captain Corelli's Mandolin

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  1. casus belli

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‘casus belli’ has been looked up 1543 times, loved by 2 people, added to 17 lists, commented on 1 time, and is not a valid Scrabble word.