adversarial
Britishadjective
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pertaining to or characterized by antagonism and conflict
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US term: adversary. having or involving opposing parties or interests in a legal contest
Explanation
Anything that's adversarial is full of intense disagreement and conflict. If you had an adversarial relationship with your sister, it would be extremely difficult to share a bedroom with her. Adversarial exchanges between countries don't bode well — they often lead to more intense conflicts, or possibly even war. Being adversarial means that each side is antagonistic, sharply opposed to the other, or locked into a deeply divided rivalry. In fact, this adjective is sometimes used simply to mean "hostile." Your adversary is your enemy or competitor, and both words stem from the Latin adversus, "turned against."
Vocabulary lists containing adversarial
ACT Reading Test: Words to Capture Tone, List 1
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Tone and Point of View, List 1
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Words to Capture Tone, List 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Discovery — and inverted the entire meaning of that tradition to mark the adversarial relationship between the press and power.
From Salon • Jun. 1, 2026
The methods they produced—careful, adversarial, institutionally embedded, historically tested—are, for that very reason, more directly relevant to our current predicament than any amount of algorithmic benchmarking.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 29, 2026
Rival U.S. firms are sharing information to detect so-called adversarial distillation attempts that violate their terms of service.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 10, 2026
Atkins warned what he “would really hate to see” is a future regulator reverting to the adversarial posture of his predecessors.
From Barron's • Mar. 24, 2026
The adversarial system means that lawyers want to win, and the better they are at winning, the more they get paid.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
