cliquery

plural cliqueries

1. countableA social structure characterized by cliques.

   As mentioned earlier, in the strange cliqueries of South Africa, even a wayward white remains white, and is judged by standards of his own tribe.

   1967, Eugene Heimler, Resistance Against Tyranny, page 54

   2 more examples

   He was a keen observer of manners, and had a wholesome contempt for the little cliqueries which are generally formed by persons of narrow mind and sparse acquirements.

   1883, George Bentley, After Business: Papers Written in the Intervals of Work, page 58

   Instances of loyalty to the smaller group as against the larger are innumerable, ranging from the strife of ' organized labor ' with ' organized capital ' through intra-labor-union and intracorporate conflicts, to the cliqueries and cabals of departmental groups in universities and the petty snobberies of medical men of different ' schools in their dealings with one another and the laity.

   1926, Theodore Hildreth Eaton, Education and vocations: principles and problems of vocational education, page 103

2. uncountableCliquishness.

   As well as the growing cliquery of school, where the girls had taken to forming and reforming into tiny splinter groups in accordance with a logic as convoluted as it was unspoken, work was becoming harder.

   2018, Lucy Mangan, Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading

   3 more examples

   Democracy, Whiggery, and Cliquery will attract their elements and foment divisions among the people, to accomplish fancied schemes and accumulate power, while poverty, driven to despair, like hunger forcing its way through a wall, will break through the statutes of men, to save life and mend the breach in prison glooms.

   1844, Joseph Smith, Views on the Government and Policy of the United States, page 10

   What garnered contempt from the pair were the criteria upon which admission to the poshocracy depended, criteria founded on the cliquery of the English upper classes, a cliquery that, disseminated as 'team spirit' (14) in public schools and perpetuated by the most privileged and credulous of undergraduates, found its way full-circle in the mentality of the graduating elite.

   2016, Benjamin Kohlmann, Edward Upward and Left-Wing Literary Culture in Britain, page 26

   ...or to the nursery assistant who cannot progress to a more senior level because taking a full-time job would mean losing more in childcare costs than she would gain in salary, as it does to the vice-president or deputy CEO blocked from the top job by covert discrimination or male cliquery.

   2017, Tom Schuller, The Paula Principle