英和和英

語源

us + versus + them

名詞

us versus them (uncountable)

1. A state of opposition between two groups, mostly based on group membership.
   • 1968, "Annual Representative Meeting, Eastbourne, 1968", British Medical Journal Supplement, (7/6/1968), pp. 1–36. p. 24

     The inevitable result of disenfranchisement was that the disinterested would become even more disinterested; the schism “us” versus “them” would grow; and special groups—e.g., women members—would feel that they were inadequately represented.

   • 1981, Martha Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism", Comparative Politics, (13) 4, (July 1981), pp. 379–99. p. 390

     Is there “us versus them” polarization or ethnic or religious prejudice that might sanction or prompt violence toward an out-group?

   • 1983, M. Stanley Whitley, "Hopefully: A Shibboleth in the English Adverb System", American Speech, (58) 2 (Summer 1983), pp. 126–49. p. 132

     From this social perception follows the corollary us-versus-them argument. Anyone who learns that this marker of identity “offends the ear” joins the select group of those in the know, and will have a criterion by which he can both identify and judge the out-group who “desire to be up with the latest in thing,” and reassert his own membership in the club of those with taste.

使用する際の注意点

Commonly used as an appositive: We must rise above us versus them thinking.

関連する語

• us against them, us-and-them

参考

• tribalism