at swords' points

alternative at swordpoints · alternative at sword's point

1. In strong conflict with each other, ready to fight.

   Following the news over the past weeks and months was making me sad. It gave the impression of an America hopelessly hostile and divided by race, class and politics, at swords’ points over even the smallest disagreements, with a government that seemed unable to perform the simplest task effectively.

   2017 September 5, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, “Hurricane Harvey revealed the awesome power of real America”, in USA Today

   2 more examples

   The seven sisters, as if Sabine women out for revenge, vie with one another, exponentially expanding complications. As they do, Fillinger is looking to decimate Great White Way hilarity records. (She’s likely already breaking the vulgarity glass ceiling.) As the at-sword’s-point encounters mount, they women are frustrated but hardly lost for dirty words or actions.

   2022 April 27, David Finkle, “POTUS: Foul-Mouthed Women on Comedy Rampage”, in New York Stage Review

   For example, during his entire time in office (but especially after the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961), Kennedy and the CIA were at sword’s point. Kennedy didn’t trust the CIA as far as he could throw Allen Dulles […] and the spooks out at Langley thought the president was callow and not up to the job of being butch with the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro.

   2022 September 17, Charles P. Pierce, “The Republicans Built a Time Machine, Powered by Racism”, in Esquire

   Synonyms: at daggers drawn, at each other's throats, at odds, up in arms