antagonize
/anˈtaɡ(ə)nʌɪz
/(also antagonise)
verb [with object]
1Cause (someone) to become hostile: the aim was to antagonize visiting supporters...
- Why go out of the way to offend and antagonize religious people?
- It is spending astronomical amounts of money, alienating allies and further antagonizing opponents.
- I fully admit I have gone out of my way on more than one occasion to needle and to antagonize him.
Synonyms
arouse hostility in, alienate, set someone against someone else, estrange, disaffect;
anger, annoy, provoke, vex, irritate, offend
informal aggravate, rile, needle, get someone's back up, make someone's hackles rise, rub up the wrong way, ruffle someone's feathers, rattle someone's cage, get up someone's nose, get in someone's hair, get someone's dander up, get under someone's skin
British informal nark, get on someone's wick
New Zealand informal rark
2 Biochemistry (Of a substance) act as an antagonist of (a substance or its action): two other drugs antagonized the antidepressant-like effect...
- For example, oxytocin's calming effects are enhanced by estrogen, but antagonized by androgen, she notes.
- Another approach is using drugs to antagonise the peripheral effects of opioids so that bowel dysfunction is reversed, speeding discharge from hospital.
- They also found that ADHD children responded variably to different B vitamins, with pyridoxine and thiamine antagonizing each other's benefits.
Derivatives
antagonization
Origin
Mid 18th century (in the sense 'struggle against'): from Greek antagōnizesthai, from ant- 'against' + agōnizesthai 'struggle' (from agōn 'contest').
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