Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to an agonist.
- adjective Striving to overcome in argument; combative.
- adjective Of or relating to contests, originally those of the ancient Greeks.
- adjective Of or relating to behavior associated with conflict between one animal and another.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to contests of strength or athletic combats, or to contests of any kind, as a forensic or argumentative contest.
- Combative; polemic; given to contending.
- Strained; aiming at effect; melodramatic.
- noun The act of combating or struggling; combat; struggle.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Pertaining to violent contests, bodily or mental; pertaining to athletic or polemic feats; athletic; combative; hence, strained; unnatural.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Of or relating to contests that were originally
participated in by the Ancient Greeks;athletic . - adjective zoology, anthropology Characterised by
conflict orhostility . - adjective rhetoric
Argumentative ,combative . - adjective pharmacology Pertaining to an
agonist .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective striving to overcome in argument
- adjective struggling for effect
- adjective of or relating to the athletic contests held in ancient Greece
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word agonistic.
Examples
-
In an antagonistic what in biology is called agonistic encounter with another animal, a dog wants to appear to be the bigger, more powerful creature—so he makes a big-dog sound.
INSIDE OF A DOG ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ 2009
-
In an antagonistic what in biology is called agonistic encounter with another animal, a dog wants to appear to be the bigger, more powerful creature—so he makes a big-dog sound.
INSIDE OF A DOG ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ 2009
-
Burckhardt and Nietzsche were colleagues in Basel, and each developed an "agonistic" theory of society.
Book review of Hugh Trevor-Roper's "History and the Enlightenment" 2010
-
Rush Limbaugh in my honest opinion I believe that you are just an agonistic pig, who do not have a heart.
-
It's here that he rails for the umpteenth time against lesser critics who have dared to suggest that his boisterous, agonistic account of writerly influence might be weighted in favour of a certain masculinist tradition.
-
One important hypothesis is that such signals impose social (or 'maintenance') costs incurred through repeated agonistic interactions with other individuals9, 10, 11, 12.
Beckwith on ID 2008
-
The idea that in such an agonistic system any truth or justice, or even true facts, reliably result is, to my mind, quite analogous to the muddle of “the invisible hand” in economics, or the idea that “competition” necessarily results in an optimal market.
Justin Raimondo vs. Christopher Hitchens on al-Jazeera « Antiwar.com Blog 2008
-
Beyond this, however, Connolly's model of a pluralism that can legitimately admire a diversity of metaphysical perspectives (rather than simply tolerate them) looks rather like an agonistic version of
Introduction 2008
-
For market fundamentalists, life is an agonistic struggle of individuals, each of whom is fundamentally alone and solely responsible for her own life.
Elissa D. Barrett: The Rest is Commentary: Jewish Post-Election Reflection Elissa D. Barrett 2010
-
A strictly atheistic or agonistic explanation is still always possible.
God, Strings, Emergence, and the Future of the World By Nicola Hoggard Creegan William Harryman 2009
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.