cliquery

Noun

cliquery (countable and uncountable, plural cliqueries)

1. (countable) A social structure characterized by cliques.
   • 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...1926, Theodore Hildreth Eaton, Education and vocations: principles and problems of vocational education, page 103
2. (uncountable) Cliquishness.
   • 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...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...2016, Benjamin Kohlmann, Edward Upward and Left-Wing Literary Culture in Britain, page 26