Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Hostile or destructive behavior or attitudes.
  • noun The practice or habit of taking hostile actions or launching military attacks.
  • noun A hostile act or military attack.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of proceeding to hostilities or invasion; a breach of the peace or right of another or others; an assault, inroad, or encroachment; hence, any offensive action or procedure: as, an aggression upon a country, or upon vested rights or liberties.
  • noun The practice of making assaults or attacks; offensive action in general.
  • noun Synonyms Attack, invasion, assault, encroachment, injury, offense.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The first attack, or act of hostility; the first act of injury, or first act leading to a war or a controversy; unprovoked attack; assault. “Aggressions of power.”

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of initiating hostilities or invasion.
  • noun The practice or habit of launching attacks.
  • noun Hostile or destructive behavior or actions.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the act of initiating hostilities
  • noun deliberately unfriendly behavior
  • noun a disposition to behave aggressively
  • noun a feeling of hostility that arouses thoughts of attack
  • noun violent action that is hostile and usually unprovoked

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French aggression, from Latin aggressio, from aggressus, past participle of aggredior ("to approach, address, attack").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word aggression.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.