Antagonist

How to spell antagonist

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce antagonist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does antagonist mean?

1. nounA person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone else; an adversary or rival.
2. nounA substance, drug, or muscle that counteracts or blocks the action of another.

Antagonist in a sentence

• The novel sets a quiet librarian against a ruthless antagonist.

• The medication acts as an antagonist at the receptor, blocking the natural signal.

• Throughout the trial she treated the defence lawyer as a personal antagonist.

• The bicep and tricep work as an antagonist pair, one relaxing as the other contracts.

Where does antagonist come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek antagonistes, meaning 'an opponent' or 'a rival', literally 'one who struggles against'. It was built from anti, meaning 'against', and agonizesthai, 'to struggle or contend', which in turn comes from agon, the Greek word for a contest or public games. That same agon root gives us 'agony', because the original contests demanded such painful effort, and it also sits inside 'protagonist', the first or leading contender. English took the word in the late 1500s, at first for any human adversary and later for the rival character in a story; the spelling preserves the Greek 'agon' in the middle, which is the part writers often blur into a vague schwa. Remembering the buried word 'agon' (a contest) helps fix the unstressed second syllable.

How the word is built

• ant- (against)
• agon (contest, struggle)
• -ist (one who does)