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Contest   /kˈɑntɛst/  /kəntˈɛst/   Listen
noun
Contest  n.  
1.
Earnest dispute; strife in argument; controversy; debate; altercation. "Leave all noisy contests, all immodest clamors and brawling language."
2.
Earnest struggle for superiority, victory, defense, etc.; competition; emulation; strife in arms; conflict; combat; encounter. "The late battle had, in effect, been a contest between one usurper and another." "It was fully expected that the contest there would be long and fierce."
Synonyms: Conflict; combat; battle; encounter; shock; struggle; dispute; altercation; debate; controvesy; difference; disagreement; strife. Contest, Conflict, Combat, Encounter. Contest is the broadest term, and had originally no reference to actual fighting. It was, on the contrary, a legal term signifying to call witnesses, and hence came to denote first a struggle in argument, and then a struggle for some common object between opposing parties, usually one of considerable duration, and implying successive stages or acts. Conflict denotes literally a close personal engagement, in which sense it is applied to actual fighting. It is, however, more commonly used in a figurative sense to denote strenuous or direct opposition; as, a mental conflict; conflicting interests or passions; a conflict of laws. An encounter is a direct meeting face to face. Usually it is a hostile meeting, and is then very nearly coincident with conflict; as, an encounter of opposing hosts. Sometimes it is used in a looser sense; as, "this keen encounter of our wits." Combat is commonly applied to actual fighting, but may be used figuratively in reference to a strife or words or a struggle of feeling.


verb
Contest  v. t.  (past & past part. contested; pres. part. contesting)  
1.
To make a subject of dispute, contention, litigation, or emulation; to contend for; to call in question; to controvert; to oppose; to dispute. "The people... contested not what was done." "Few philosophical aphorisms have been more frequenty repeated, few more contested than this."
2.
To strive earnestly to hold or maintain; to struggle to defend; as, the troops contested every inch of ground.
3.
(Law) To make a subject of litigation; to defend, as a suit; to dispute or resist; as a claim, by course of law; to controvert.
To contest an election. (Polit.)
(a)
To strive to be elected.
(b)
To dispute the declared result of an election.
Synonyms: To dispute; controvert; debate; litigate; oppose; argue; contend.


Contest  v. i.  To engage in contention, or emulation; to contend; to strive; to vie; to emulate; followed usually by with. "The difficulty of an argument adds to the pleasure of contesting with it, when there are hopes of victory." "Of man, who dares in pomp with Jove contest?"





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Contest" Quotes from Famous Books



... even awful, to behold the rare sight of a man thoroughly in earnest, doing his best, putting forth all there is in him, and staking his very soul (as these rowers appeared willing to do) on the issue of the contest. It was the seventy-fourth annual regatta of the Free Watermen of Greenwich, and announced itself as under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and other distinguished individuals, at whose expense, I suppose, a prize-boat was offered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... human situation, that forlorn stage rises. The fearful spaces of the godless night are its roof, and row above row, tier above tier in its shadowy enclosure, the troubled crowds of the tribes of men wait the wavering issue of the contest. Full on the high stage in this tragic theatre of the universe Pascal throws the merciless searchlight of his imaginative logic, and the rhythm of the duality of man's fate is the rhythm of the music of his ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... a new conception. And what of Churchill? He, too, had worked for the future; he would live on, but he had already ceased to exist. I had evoked him in this poignant thought and he came not alone. He came with a train of all the vanquished in this stealthy, unseen contest for an immense stake in which I was one of the victors. They crowded upon me. I saw Fox, Polehampton, de Mersch himself, crowds of figures without a name, women with whom I had fancied myself in love, men I had shaken by the hand, Lea's reproachful, ironical face. They were near; near enough ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... myself in opposition to M. de Laplace. The illustrious geometer wished a vacant place in the astronomical section to be granted to M. Nicollet,—a man without talent, and, moreover, suspected of misdeeds which reflected on his honour in the most serious degree. At the close of a contest, which I maintained undisguisedly, notwithstanding the danger which might follow from thus braving the powerful protectors of M. Nicollet, the Academy proceeded to the ballot; the respected M. Damoiseau, whose election I had supported, obtained ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the wind quickened, it deployed in great luminously white columns, following the invisible curves of the atmospheric current; and anon, in flaky detached fragments, it fled dispersed down the avenues like the scattered stragglers of a routed army. The wind was having the best of the contest; and though it still rained when he reached the vicinity of Alan Selwyn's lonely dwelling, the mist was gone, the clouds were all resolved into the steady fall of the torrents, and the little house on the slope ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock


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