# divide and conquer

idiom · CEFR B2

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/divide-and-conquer
Updated: 2026-08-03

## Meaning

To keep opponents from uniting so that each can be dealt with separately.

## Examples

- He talked to each of them alone — classic divide and conquer.
- Management offered a different deal to each department, and the union called it divide and conquer.
- The strategy was divide and conquer from the first week: separate meetings, separate offers, and a carefully maintained impression that everyone else had already settled on terms better than the ones now being refused.

## Origin

Rome practised this long before anyone wrote it down as a maxim. After defeating the Latin League in 338 BC, Rome refused to negotiate with the league as a body. Each city got its own separate treaty on its own terms, some with citizenship, some without, none with the right to make agreements with each other. A dozen towns that could have combined against Rome were left facing it one at a time. The Latin tag divide et impera — divide and rule — is not classical. It circulates in European political writing from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, applied retrospectively to Rome by people who had read Livy and admired the machinery. English uses divide and conquer for anything from imperial policy to management technique: the deliberate work of keeping the other side fragmented, because a group that cannot agree on a position cannot press one.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.