contention

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Competing and contending (non-sporting)
as a dare
be one up on someoneidiom
cat
catchup
challenge someone to something/do something
dare
get one up on someoneidiom
give someone/something a run for their moneyidiom
go in for something
go toe to toeidiom
hyper-competitive
jungle
pit
runners and ridersidiom
sharp elbowsidiom
sharp-elbowed
sharpen (something) up
sharpen your elbowsidiom
snap
toe

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Arguments & disagreements

rivalry | American Dictionary

rivalry
noun[ C/U ]
us/ˈrɑɪ·vəl·ri/
a serious and often continuing competition:
[ C ]Jerusalem was the scene of more passions and rivalries than any other city on earth.

rivalry | Business English

rivalry
noun[ C or U ]
/ˈraɪvəlri/ukuspluralrivalries
a situation in which people, companies, products, etc. are competing with each other:
rivalry between sb and sbThere is considerable rivalry between banks and accountancy firms when it comes to giving corporate financial advice.
rivalry for sthCompany culture often pits employees against each other in terms of rivalry for promotion.
The two companies have put old rivalries aside to combine their broadcast, transmission and interactive operations.
private companies working in rivalry with one another

Examples of rivalry

rivalry
Chapter 4 of the book discusses societal factors in the rivalry for a strong regional presence.
The divisions, some bordering on inter-service rivalry, remained largely intact until long after direct imperial assimilation in 1858.
We observe greater probabilities of survival for rivalries in which the weak link of the dyad exhibits low levels of democracy and development.
Its immediate effect was to bring the ferocious and often violent rivalries between trade unions into the workplace.
Provincial rivalries for power were slowly eliminated, internal conflict reduced, and presidents succeeded one another observing the principle of no re-election.
Yet rivalry, like war, is costly and thus usually ex-post inefficient.
The rivalry between ethnic factions was confirmed by an attempted coup in 1982.
Similarly, membership in organizations with mechanisms for conflict resolution enhances the credibility of commitments and therefore reduces the duration of rivalry.
Local rivalries meant little cooperation between close neighbours over the siting of particular services.
We also extended the earlier study by assessing the rivalry rates of 18 subjects with schizophrenia and 18 subjects with major depression.
This was a strong argument in a time of growing political rivalry.
The rivalries that surfaced took shape according to various criteria of social differentiation, including age, gender, wealth, and profession.
The ending of the superpower stand-off, however, has aggravated conditions that contribute to ethnic rivalry and tension.
The perceptual alternation results from competing chromatic signals, but are competing receptoral signals from the two eyes necessary for binocular color rivalry?
This result implies that rivalrous chromatic representations, not the physical differences in stimuli, cause binocular rivalry.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withrivalry

rivalry

These are words often used in combination with rivalry.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

bitter rivalry
Their celebrated friendship, which later became a bitterrivalry, remains inseparable from the conceptual foundations of the anatomical sciences, including comparative anatomy and paleontology.
ethnic rivalry
The ending of the superpower stand-off, however, has aggravated conditions that contribute to ethnicrivalry and tension.
fierce rivalry
On the other side you have fiercerivalry for place and power, which is made more intense when constitutional changes are under review or have recently been inaugurated.
From the
Hansard archive