RIVAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Rival

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/rˈaɪvəl/ Listen

adjective

Rival adj. Having the same pretensions or claims; standing in competition for superiority; as, rival lovers; rival claims or pretensions. "The strenuous conflicts and alternate victories of two rival confederacies of statesmen."

noun

Rival n.

A person having a common right or privilege with another; a partner. (Obs.) "If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste."

One who is in pursuit of the same object as another; one striving to reach or obtain something which another is attempting to obtain, and which one only can posses; a competitor; as, rivals in love; rivals for a crown. Note: "Rivals, in the primary sense of the word, are those who dwell on the banks of the same stream. But since, as all experience shows, there is no such fruitful source of coutention as a water right, it would continually happen that these occupants of the opposite banks would be at strife with one another in regard of the periods during which they severally had a right to the use of the stream... And thus 'rivals'... came to be used of any who were on any grounds in more or less unfriendly competition with one another."

Synonyms: Competitor; emulator; antagonist.

verb

Rival v. t. (past & past part. rivaled or rivalled; pres. part. rivaling or rivalling)

To stand in competition with; to strive to gain some object in opposition to; as, to rival one in love.

To strive to equal or exel; to emulate. "To rival thunder in its rapid course."

Rival v. i. To be in rivalry. (Obs.)

See images of 'Rival'

Etymology of 'Rival'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Rival" Quotes from Famous Books

... mouth of the Thames is less than a hundred miles from the mouth of the Scheldt, and he knew that, with a naval station equal to any in the possession of England, he could, in time of war, cripple or destroy the commerce of his great rival. He expended ten millions of dollars on these docks, basins, and fortifications. The English were alarmed, and in 1809 sent the Walcheren expedition, which obtained a foothold on that island, but were defeated by disease and death, for seven thousand ...

— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... "Harewood" is plainer and of less compass, but Zundel's "Brooklyn" is more than its rival, both ...

— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... him free by confessing an attempt at suicide. Margaret Bean, it was reported, had seen the letter which Lot had written to Burr in prison. When Madelon, who, half crazed by anxiety about her lover, had wrongfully accused herself to save him, had seen him turn to her rival and scorn her after his release, she had accepted Lot in a rage of pride and jealousy, as he had planned for her to do. The breaking off of the marriage betwixt her and Lot they mostly attributed to the simple cause he had mentioned—his failing health—though ...

— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Bushnell. He did not know as yet whether the other was to play on the rival team, but at least he had shown his heart was set on his home town coming out victor in the ...

— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... distracted by the pretensions of usurpers, and being confirmed in the principles of patriotism by a more rigid adherance to the law of Moses, continued during one hundred and thirty years to resist the encroachments of the two rival powers, Egypt and Assyria, which now began to contend in earnest for the possession of Palestine. Several endeavours were made, even after the destruction of Samaria, to unite the energies of the Twelve Tribes, and thereby to ...

— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

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