Definitions

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

  • noun Hostility that results in active resistance, opposition, or contentiousness. synonym: enmity.
  • noun The condition of being an opposing principle, force, or factor.
  • noun Biochemistry Interference in the physiological action of a chemical substance by another having a similar structure.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being mutually opposed; mutual resistance or opposition of two forces in action; contrariety of things or principles.
  • noun The act of antagonizing; opposition.

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

  • noun Opposition of action; counteraction or contrariety of things or principles.

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

  • noun A strong natural dislike or hatred; antipathy.

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

  • noun an actively expressed feeling of dislike and hostility
  • noun a state of deep-seated ill-will
  • noun the relation between opposing principles or forces or factors
  • noun (biochemistry) interference in or inhibition of the physiological action of a chemical substance by another having a similar structure

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ἀνταγωνιστής ("opponent"), from ἀνταγωνίζεσθαι ("antagonize"), from Ancient Greek ἀγών ("contest") (English agon).

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Examples

  • Antagonism never lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all the capitalist class offers.

    Revolution 2010

  • And even when they do manage to notice a rise in antagonism, they somehow employ the wrong strategy to placate it.

    Matthew Yglesias » Is The Universe a Hologram? Should We Care? 2010

  • I think that relationship of antagonism is pretty damn important to that type of fiction, and the fundamental difference in attitude between that and "pro-strange" WFA winners is a point of interest, surely.

    Narrative Grammars Hal Duncan 2008

  • That my own rhetoric of antagonism is just as deserving of destruction as that of those monomaniacs I'm opposing.

    Archive 2006-02-01 Hal Duncan 2006

  • That my own rhetoric of antagonism is just as deserving of destruction as that of those monomaniacs I'm opposing.

    The Heirs of Job Hal Duncan 2006

  • The CPIM believes in the genesis and development of the Tatas, Birlas, etc. through basically long-term antagonism with the British Capital.

    A Maoist critique of the CPI(Marxist) Abhay N 2007

  • Some historians closer to the CPI have been pedalling for long such a distorted view on “the long-term antagonism and short-term accommodation and dependence” of the big bourgeoisie in India during the freedom movement which advanced “towards a bourgeois nation state and independent development.”

    A Maoist critique of the CPI(Marxist) Abhay N 2007

  • But despite this new knowledge, the mystery of the LSD-serotonin antagonism persisted.

    LSD and the Third Eye 1966

  • There is a certain antagonism between the hypophysis and the pancreas.

    Bernardo Houssay - Nobel Lecture 1964

  • When the antagonism is increased, poetry replaces the subordinate thought of the politician who makes poetry into an idea that can be exploited or extinguished.

    Salvatore Quasimodo - Nobel Lecture 1959

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