oppositional

American  

[op-uh-zish-uh-nl] / ˌɒp əˈzɪʃ ə nl /

Rarely oppositionary

adjective

1. opposing, resisting, or combating; expressing a view or stance against something or someone.

   In experimental film one often finds an oppositional attitude toward mainstream culture, and a desire to forge an alternative.

2. expressing antagonism or hostility.

   Learning effective coping skills can reduce the negative influences of anger, oppositional behavior, and poor impulse control.

3. relating to or being in a contrastive, symmetrical, or complementary two-way relation.

   This remote-controlled wooden floor lamp is a simple, efficient, seemingly oppositional pairing of the natural and technological.

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Other Word Forms

• unoppositional adjective

Etymology

Origin of oppositional

opposition ( def. ) + -al ¹ ( def. )

Example Sentences

He also presents Christina Crawford as a bitter, oppositional personality from early on, and he quotes other family members who insist they saw none of the abuse alleged in “Mommie Dearest.”

From The Wall Street Journal

But the audience is only privy to this after Aggie agrees to Nile’s invitation to profile him for her next book, instead of examining the unlikely kinship that existed between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, people with starkly oppositional interpretations of the law and justice.

From Salon

Despite all that power, Frey’s turn toward being an oppositional figure stuck.

From Slate

If you read closely – and by that I mean look at a news report over the shoulder of a character doing oppositional research in the third episode, “Metamorphosis” – you’ll see that this is a future mankind allegedly asked for.

From Salon

Top of mind for me is to right our city’s relationship to water and to land, which has for so long been largely oppositional: trying to engineer against nature, bringing water to the desert, paving our rivers to control floods.

From Los Angeles Times