contest
noun /ˈkɒntɛst 
/
/1An event in which people compete for supremacy in a sport or other activity, or in a quality: a tennis contest...
- Festivals are based on contests and events such as poetry readings, sports, and other activities.
- The technical events include quiz contests, an on-the-spot hardware design contest and a hardware debugging contest.
- Over 25 events, including contests, classes and fun games, will be held.
Synonyms
competition, match, tournament, game, meet;
event, trial, bout, heat, fixture, tie, race
1.1A competition for a political position: a leadership contest...
- It is also the outcome of the calculated political manipulation of the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
- Watching the Conservative Party leadership contest, political neutrals are unsure whether to laugh or cry.
- Then, presidential candidates can't ignore the early political contests in New Hampshire and Iowa, or can they?
1.2A dispute or conflict: a contest between traditional and liberal views...
- Part B concentrates on such contests and disputes, exploring them more systematically than did the prior materials.
- I don't at this stage, and I never have thought, that it's constructive to characterise it as a conflict or a contest.
- The contest over tropes of traditional Africa and measures of authenticity in postcolonial arts and politics can be thought of in a similar manner.
Synonyms
struggle, conflict, confrontation, collision, clash, battle, fight, combat, tussle, skirmish, duel, race
verb /kənˈtɛst / [with object]
/ [with object]1Engage in competition to attain (a position of power): she declared her intention to contest the presidency...
- Twelve people are contesting eight positions on city council.
- In the post-modern world, preoccupied with contesting every perceived centre of power, the severest casualty has been our ability to judge between right and wrong, beautiful and ugly.
- It was representing Wolf hill as a delegate to the county board that he successfully contested the position of secretary.
Synonyms
compete for, contend for, vie for, challenge for, fight for, fight over, battle for, struggle for, tussle for;
try to win, try for, go for, throw one's hat in the ring
compete in, contend in, fight in, battle in, enter, take part in, be a competitor in, participate in, put one's name down for, go in for
1.1Take part in (a competition or election): a coalition was formed to contest the presidential elections...
- The party's general council decided following the last election they would contest the next poll as an independent party, a spokesperson said.
- Methodology was contested in the election of eight senators out of a total of 7,500 posts filled.
- After the Russian troops left Chechnya by 1997, he contested the presidential election there.
2Oppose (an action or theory) as mistaken or wrong: the former chairman contests his dismissal...
- So it contests the theory of evolution while also accommodating much of the theories?
- National threatens to dismantle workers rights to contest dismissal and also seek to reduce holiday entitlements.
- None of the allegations made by the former pupils were contested.
Synonyms
oppose, object to, challenge, dispute, take a stand against, resist, defy, strive/struggle against, take issue with;
question, call into question, doubt;
litigate
2.1Engage in dispute about: the issues have been hotly contested...
- The ‘cause’ of an individual's sexual orientation is one of the most hotly contested debates within the scientific community.
- Education and its reform were hotly contested topics of debate in Regency Spain.
- The directive, which is up for review at the close of 2002, will no doubt be a hotly contested debate.
Synonyms
debate, argue about, dispute, quarrel over
Phrases
no contest
Derivatives
contestability
- Some were surprised to hear him enthusiastically espouse the private sector and contestability at the launch.
- To develop the discussion of natural monopoly and contestability, it is important to introduce three additional economic concepts: internal cross-subsidy, avoidable costs, and shared costs.
- And it has introduced real contestability of policy advice.
contestable
/ adjective ...- She says the assumptions of the rational actor model underlying classical contract theory are ‘arguably contestable.’
- At the same time, some feminists have sought to impose a particular social vision, even though their own views are highly controversial and contestable.
- Except that we received much more challenging and contestable papers that opened up the question of culture by showing it rather than saying it.
contestably
- Here, the better-off agree to bear the burden of at least partly redressing what is widely, but contestably, called social injustice.
- They have an electoral mountain to climb - it would take two exceptional General Election results for them to reduce Labour's landslide to a contestably thin majority.
- "All we ask is to be left alone and do what we like on our own," Priestley said contestably but, given the times, forgivably.
contester
- That practice has stopped when parents / contesters decided to move courts.
- Contesting a patent creates many benefits, and the contester gets only a fraction of them.
- She suggests that sports ‘both objectify social divisions and nationalist sentiments and point to an alliance between contesters, a shared fanaticism’.
Origin
Late 16th century (as a verb in the sense 'swear to, attest'): from Latin contestari 'call upon to witness, initiate (by calling witnesses)', from con- 'together' + testare 'to witness'. The senses 'wrangle, struggle for' arose in the early 17th century, whence the current noun and verb senses.
Rhymes
- labor-only
- laborous
- laborously
- labor pain
- labor party
- Labor Party, Australian
- labor relations
- labor-saver
- labor secretary
- labor spy
- labor-starved
- labor time
- labor yard
- labour
- labour bank
- labour bill
- labour book
- labour brigade
- labour bureau
- labour camp
- labour candidate
- labour class
- labour coach
- labour colony
- labour content