Confrontation

//ˌkɑn.fɹənˈteɪ.ʃən// noun

noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of confronting or challenging another, especially face to face. countable, uncountable

    "During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, this commitment brought him into frequent critical confrontation with entrenched forms of conservative thinking (in academic areas from history and social science to the more abstract domains of ethical and political philosophy)[…]"

  2. 2
    a focussed comparison; bringing together for a careful comparison wordnet
  3. 3
    A conflict between armed forces. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    the act of hostile groups opposing each other wordnet
  5. 5
    a hostile disagreement face-to-face wordnet
Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    discord resulting from a clash of ideas or opinions wordnet
  2. 7
    a bold challenge wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
showdownallegoryanalogyantagonismantepositionantipathy

Example

More examples

"He deliberately kept on provoking a confrontation."

Etymology

From Middle French. Morphologically confront + -ation.

Related phrases

self-confrontationarmed forcesface to face

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.