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Competition   /kˌɑmpətˈɪʃən/   Listen
Competition

noun
1.
A business relation in which two parties compete to gain customers.
2.
An occasion on which a winner is selected from among two or more contestants.  Synonym: contest.
3.
The act of competing as for profit or a prize.  Synonyms: contention, rivalry.
4.
The contestant you hope to defeat.  Synonyms: challenger, competitor, contender, rival.  "He wanted to know what the competition was doing"



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"Competition" Quotes from Famous Books



... since he was going to the "Britannia," arrogated to himself the position of being an authority on shipping; so much so, indeed, that general satisfaction was felt when he was, one evening, worsted by Christian. The subject selected for competition was "A ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... were home, and the familiar golden-oak chairs and tidies blurred their memory of Miss Mitchin's crushing competition, Father again declared that no dinky tea-pot inn could permanently rival Mother's home-made doughnuts. But he said it faintly then, and more faintly on the days following, for inactivity again enervated him—made him, for the first time in his ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... interchange of benefits between us will but make stronger a friendship which carries with it the recognition of benefits. I sincerely hope, Dr. Mueller, upon your return to Brazil, you may feel it in your heart to tell your people that here, while we are pursuing our business careers, earnest in competition, eager to improve our conditions, anxious for trade, desirous of the greatness and glory of our country, we seek those ends only through universal friendship, through carrying, so far as we can, the benefits ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... a very pretty room. It may almost be said that there could be no prettier room in all London. It looked out across certain small private gardens,—which were as bright and gay as money could make them when brought into competition with London smoke,—right on to the park. Outside and inside the window, flowers and green things were so arranged that the room itself almost looked as though it were a bower in a garden. And everything in that bower was rich and rare; and ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... an informal patent of gentility. To my mind, the structure of society was almost ideal, and until we have a perfectly socialized condition of things I do not believe we shall ever have a more perfect society. The instincts which governed it were not such as can arise from the sordid competition of interests; they flowed from a devotion to letters, and from a self-sacrifice in material things which I can give no better notion of than by saying that the outlay of the richest college magnate seemed to be graduated to the income ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... warm-hearted, sensitive and thoughtful, Edith had a singularly happy disposition. First, she was good-tempered; not touchy, not easily offended about trifles. Such vanity as she had was not in an uneasy condition; she cared very little for general admiration, and had no feeling for competition. She was without ambition to be superior to others. Then, though she saw more deeply into things than the generality of women, she was not fond of dwelling on the sad side of life. Very small things pleased her, while trifles did not annoy her. Hers was not the placidity of the stupid, ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... ago Mr. Punch gave an account of the Sporpot (or Spaerpot, meaning a savings-box), a familiar institution which our little guests from Belgium brought over with them to England. The idea was taken up by certain schools in South Africa, and a competition was started to see which of them could fill the biggest Sporpot to make a fund for helping to restore the homes of Belgian exiles. This year the Eunice High School for Girls at Bloemfontein comes out first, and the second honours fall to the St. Andrew's Preparatory ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... which—whatever be their other virtues, and they are many—is most given to spending their wives' earnings in drink, and personally maltreating them; and least likely—to judge from the actions of certain trades—to admit women to free competition for employment. Further extension of the suffrage will, perhaps, in a very few years, admit many thousands more. And it is no wonder if refined and educated women, in an age which is disposed to see in the possession of a vote the best means of self-defence, ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley

... Majesty ... that the fishermen of the two nations may not give cause for daily quarrels, was pleased to engage that he would take the most positive measures for preventing his subjects from interrupting in any measure by their competition, the fishing of the French during the temporary exercise thereof which is granted to them upon the coasts of the island of Newfoundland, and that he would for that purpose cause the permanent settlements which should be formed there to be removed, and that he would ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... representation of, the difference which exists between the price of an article of home production and a similar article of foreign production. A protective duty calculated upon such a basis does nothing more than secure free competition; free competition can only exist where there is an equality in the facilities of production. In a horse-race the load which each horse carries is weighed and all advantages equalized; otherwise there ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... the remedy is to 'keep ourselves in the love of God;' and then these things are the gifts of our Father's hand, and will never be put in competition with him. And they are never so ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... did well at school, but he did still better at college, where the competition was more severe. He entered Trinity on October 19th, 1871, just three days after his seventeenth birthday. Sir Edward Sullivan writes me that when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was already "a thoroughly good classical scholar of a brilliant type," ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... "that sexual inversion is increasing among Americans—both men and women—and the obvious reasons are: first, the growing independence of the women, their lessening need for marriage; secondly, the nervous strain that business competition has brought upon the whole nation. In a word, the rapidly increasing masculinity in women and the unhealthy nervous systems of the men offer the ideal factors for the production of sexual inversion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... for one hundred guineas, but one of the horses being withdrawn, a mare started alone, that by running the ground she might ensure the wager. After having run about a mile in the four, she was joined by a greyhound, which leaped into the course from one side, and entering into the competition, continued to race with the mare for the other three miles, keeping nearly head and head, and affording an excellent treat to the field by the energetic exertions of each. At passing the distance post five to four was bet in favor of the greyhound; when parallel ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown

... still kept his place, still flouted the accepted order, still read sinister motives into every human activity. New machinery had increased the prosperity of the enterprise, but to no considerable extent. Competition continued keen as ever, and each year saw the workers winning slightly increased power through the advance ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... that it is very doubtful if the railways will ever attempt any very fundamental change in the direction of greater speed or facility, unless they are first exposed to the pressure of our second alternative, competition, and we may very well go on to inquire how long will it be before that second alternative comes into operation—if ever it is ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... age, and it was not long before every town of any considerable importance regarded telegraphic facilities as an indispensable necessity. The small cost soon induced the construction of rival lines, regardless of the rights of the patentees, and within a very few years unwise competition began to bring many lines to a condition of bankruptcy. The weaker concerns soon passed through the sheriff's hands and found purchasers only at an extreme sacrifice, at the bidding of the more provident and conservative proprietors of competing lines. Instead of inducing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... used above we assumed that the laborer worked three hours a day to produce a value equal to the value of his labor-power. The price of this value, the value produced by his paid labor, we call "Wages." This price is often reduced by the competition of "scabs" and other victims of capitalist exploitation, below the real value of labor-power, but we have not time to go into that here, so we will assume that the laborer gets in wages the full value ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... trade throve in England until the close of the Middle Ages, but throughout the fifteenth century the staplers were beginning to feel the competition of another company—that of the famous Merchant Adventurers, who, taking advantage of the growth in the native cloth manufacture during the previous century, had begun to do a great trade in the export of cloth. This was obnoxious ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... sense of the word as understood by the Socialist Whatever tends to private advantage or advances an individual or class interest at the expense of a public one, is anarchistic. Cooperation is Socialism; competition is Anarchism. Competition carried to its logical conclusion (which only cooperation prevents or can prevent) would leave no law in force no property possible ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... We're spending a hundred thousand there, and millions along the line, that we may have the smoothest roadbed in the world when we're done, and the quickest route from sea to sea. It looks like waste, but it isn't. It's science! It's the fight of competition! It's the determination behind the forces—the determination to make this road the greatest road in the ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... nothing," said Mrs. Fletcher, "for the necessity of earning a living in these days of competition. Women never will come to their proper position in the world, even as companions of men, which you regard as their highest office, until they have the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Thus, Competition, which was once merely part of the natural progress of a country, will hereafter be a large part of ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... and French Governments, moreover, convinced of the value of a perfect instrument, had offered a high reward for its invention. The Academy of Science had instituted a competition. In 1765 Le Roy sent in two watches for competition, whilst Berthould, who was in the king's service, was unable to do so. Le Roy's watches passed successfully through the various trials to which they were subjected on land. It remained to be proved whether they would be equally trustworthy ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... German exports of arms to the British forces in the Boer war after the Boer trade had been cut off. In the Russo-Japanese war Krupp notoriously supplied both sides. In the Balkan war there was said to be competition between Krupp and Creusot in furnishing cannon. No state in the nature of things can satisfy its needs in war completely from its own resources. Every belligerent has bought, every neutral has allowed its citizens to sell, munitions since modern war began. England sympathized ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... the usual form, to be in the hands of the Department of the Interior before noon on a certain day, marked so and so, and to be opened at high noon a week later. The contract was a large one, the competition was ample. Several other Texas drovers besides myself had submitted bids; but they stood no show—I had been furnished the figures of every competitor. The ramifications of the ring of which I was the mere figure-head can be readily imagined. I sublet the contract ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... when I tried it on at home because there were no comparisons. Here, where there's competition, I—I'm hopeless. I'd better have worn ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... apparently endless resources. Yet there was the same depression out here. Shops and mills closed, for sale, and to let; some running on three-quarter time, with half the number of workmen, others going on at ruinous competition; anxious, moody-eyed men walking the streets, or grouped on corners, their coats and hats shabby, their beards untrimmed, old boots and shoes with the heels tramped over at one side, or a bit of stocking showing through the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... lay far beyond the outmost bounds of civilised life, but the progress of emigration had sent forward wave after wave into the northern wilderness, and the tide rose at last until its distant murmur began to jar on the ears of the traders in their lonely dwelling; warning them that competition was at hand, and that, if they desired to carry on the trade in peace, they must push still further into the bush, or be hopelessly swallowed up ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... with Xerxes himself by the land: but which of the governors of provinces brought the best equipped force and received from the king the gifts proposed, I am not able to say, for I do not know that they even came to a competition in this matter. Then after they had crossed the river Halys and had entered Phrygia, marching through this land they came to Kelainai, where the springs of the river Maiander come up, and also those of another river not less than the Maiander, whose name ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... author. The fourth may indeed signify nothing more than Lady Sidney's bereavement by her husband's death; but this interpretation seems too literal for a professed allegory. The sixth obviously alludes to the splendid obsequies to Sidney, performed at the Queen's expense, and to the competition of the States of Holland for the honor of burying ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... best market in the world for fresh mushrooms; the demand for them is increasing, and the supply has always been inadequate. The price for them here is more than double that paid in any other country, and we have no fear of foreign competition, for all attempts, so far, to import fresh mushrooms from Europe have ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... indefinite, porous, and unmanaged boundaries, however, encourage illegal cross-border activities, uncontrolled migration, and confrontation; territorial disputes may evolve from historical and/or cultural claims, or they may be brought on by resource competition; ethnic clashes continue to be responsible for much of the territorial fragmentation around the world; disputes over islands at sea or in rivers frequently form the source of territorial and boundary conflict; other sources of contention include ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... elegant and judging fore-fathers, procure crowded houses, while the noblest strokes of Dryden, the delicate touches of Otway and Rowe, the wild majesty of Shakespear, and the heart-felt language of Lee, pass neglected, when put in competition with those gewgaws of the stage, these feasts of the eye; which as they can communicate no ideas, so they can neither warm nor reform the heart, nor answer one ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... age are abandoned in the next. This generation looks back on the earnest occupations of a preceding, as the adult looks back on the sports and toys of childhood. It is more than supposable, that the planning for the chances of office, the competition for making most gain out of the least productiveness—these earnest pursuits of the men of this age—in the next will be resigned to the children of larger growth; just as are now resigned the trappings of military glory. Where then is the human mind ultimately to fix? Where is man to find so essentially ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... mere sign, a portent. There was nothing in him. Just about that time the word Thrift was to the fore. You know the power of words. We pass through periods dominated by this or that word—it may be development, or it may be competition, or education, or purity or efficiency or even sanctity. It is the word of the time. Well just then it was the word Thrift which was out in the streets walking arm in arm with righteousness, the inseparable companion and backer ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... and thus the Publicani had at their disposal numerous places in the provinces, which gave them great influence at Rome. (Cicero, Pro Cn. Plancio, c. 19.) The taxes were taken at some sum that was agreed upon; and we find an instance mentioned by Cicero (Ad Attic. i. 17) in which their competition or their greediness led them to give too much and to call on the Senate to cancel the bargain. The Romans at this time derived little revenue from Italy, and the large expenditure had to be supplied out of the revenue raised in the provinces and collected by the Publicani. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... continued Miss Turner, was the home, and she hoped they would all make good wives. She had done her best to prepare them to be such. Independence, they would find, was only relative: no one had it completely. And she hoped that none of her scholars would ever descend to that base competition to outdo one's neighbours, so characteristic ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... since Milton, just settled in London after his return from Italy, had first fastened on the subject, preferred it by a sure instinct to all the others that occurred in competition with it, and sketched four plans for its treatment in the form of a sacred tragedy, one with the precise title Paradise Lost, and another with the title Adam Unparadised (Vol. II. pp. 106-108, and 115-119). ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... Islands has been endeavoring to break Mr. Spreckels' power, but has made very little progress until the other day, when he granted permission to one of the Pacific mail steamers to enter into competition with Mr. Spreckels' boats for the carrying trade of the islands. The permission stated that the President would allow the Pacific Mail Company to increase the number of vessels on the line if they desired to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 50, October 21, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... was proud of it! He trusted to his lucky star. Whenever he thought it best, he would ship his produce off from the port of Valencia, and—there you are!—it would always turn out that his oranges found no competition on arrival and brought the highest prices. More than once it had happened that rough weather held his vessel up. Well—the market would sell out, and his shipment would have a clear field ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... pretty accurately with the building of the coastguard station upon St. Lide's and the arrival of a Divisional Officer. But if smuggling flourished once, it had fallen on evil days, and its secrets had been hidden from his childhood. Also about that time the pilotage had decayed in competition with the licensed pilots on St. Ann's, and but a few hovelling jobs in and about Cromwell's Sound fell to the share of the men of Saaron. (He could recall discussions and injurious words, half-understood at the time, faint echoes of that old quarrel ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the perfect Chow has not yet arrived. He nearly came with Ch. Chow VIII.—long since dead, alas!—and with Ch. Fu Chow, the best Chow now living, his light coloured eyes being his only defect. With many judges, however, this dog's black coat handicaps him sadly in competition with his red brethren. Chow VIII. is considered the best and most typical dog ever benched, notwithstanding his somewhat round eyes. Almond eyes are of course correct in Chinamen. Ch. Red Craze owns the head which is perfect with the correct ear-carriage ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... Street, at last," Kelly repeated. "I knew you would. And I suppose you are going to enter into competition with me. I believe you are the one man of whom I ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... scarcely a rag to cover them, or a crust to eat, the rich people flung their gold away on useless trifles. Indeed, a kind of competition existed among them as to who could waste his money ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... to assure full opportunity and free competition to business we will vigorously enforce the anti-trust laws. There is much the Congress can do to cooperate and assist in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... had been buried with the body. To prevent such unholy desecration the Egyptians used to build small mounds of stones on top of the graves. These little mounds gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher mounds than the poor and there was a good deal of competition to see who could make the highest hill of stones. The record was made by King Khufu, whom the Greeks called Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era. His mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the Egyptian ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... gymnastic work selected and taught for that purpose; but the other conditions may be largely and quickly relieved through the use of games. Even five minutes in the class room will do this,—five minutes of lively competition, of laughter, and of absorbing involuntary interest. The more physical activity there is in this the better, and fifteen minutes of even freer activity in the fresh air of the playground is more ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... things we're never going to do I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking It's no good simply going—you've got to go somewhere Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful Saw how futile was much competition They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for When you strike your camp, put out the fires Women may leave you in the bright days You never can really overtake a ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger

... work to wrong anybody, to wreck anybody's life. They would shrink in horror from the thought, let alone the deed. Yet, they must talk, they must exchange the day's news, they must have news that no one else had; and this competition is the cause of half the misery on earth. What if they exaggerate a little here and a little there? No harm is meant. Human nature, having found its speech, must have something to talk about; that which it has neither seen nor heard, ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... turn of Mind and Discourse, that they have not any remaining Value for true Honour and Honesty; preferring the Capacity of being Artful to gain their Ends, to the Merit of despising those Ends when they come in competition with their Honesty. All this is due to the very silly Pride that generally prevails, of being valued for the Ability of carrying their Point; in a word, from the Opinion that shallow and inexperienced People entertain of the short-liv'd Force of Cunning. But I shall, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... many objections to be overcome. Some thought it unladylike for the young maidens to take part in a competition which must attract many lookers-on, and which it seemed to them very hoidenish to venture upon. Some said it was a shame to let a crew of girls try their strength against an equal number of powerful young men. These objections were offset by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... manufacturing house to which I had advanced quite half the capital, in order to enter into a sympathetic communion with the cotton-spinners. The writer complained heavily of the import duty on the raw material, made some poignant allusions to the increasing competition on the continent and in America, and pretty clearly intimated that the lord of the manor of Householder ought to make himself felt by the administration in a question of so much magnitude to the nation. On this hint I spake. I sat down on the spot and wrote ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and I heard some anecdotes of his munificence to the deserving, but do not consider myself at liberty to repeat them. His habits lead him to continue in business, though the profits are now trifling. Those of his father and his own, formerly, were 2 or 300 per cent, but competition has now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... best sailors going over to their enemies the English. The remedy was suggested: make France the most attractive market for U.S. whale oil. At the same time, English whaling had been government subsidized and could undercut competition. ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... tobacco I met with considerable competition, but none that materially injured me. The method of preparing it having originated with me and my father, we found it necessary, in order to secure the advantage of the invention, to keep it to ourselves, and decline, though often solicited, going into partnership ...
— The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. • Lunsford Lane

... cattle, elsewhere so much on wine, eatables and fish[1226] Having formerly built the oven, the winepress, the mill and the slaughterhouse, he obliges the inhabitants to use these or pay for their support, and he demolishes all constructions, which might enter into competition with him[1227]. These, again, are evidently monopolies and octrois going back to the time when he was ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... quite so unpleasant afterwards. Upon this principle Frederick Brent acted instinctively. What with work and study and contact with his fellow-students, he found the seminary not so bad a place, after all. Indeed, he began to take a sort of pleasure in his pursuits. The spirit of healthy competition in the school whetted his mind and made him forgetful of many annoyances from without. When some fellow-salesman at the store gibed at him for being a parson, it hurt him; but the wound was healed and he was compensated when in debate he triumphed over ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... for. The same was the case with most of those near Vicksburg. In some instances, there were several applicants for the same plantation. The agents announced their determination to sell the choice of plantations to the highest bidder. The competition for the best places was expected to ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... the corn-lands of France are said to be much better cultivated than those of Poland. But though the poor country, notwithstanding the inferiority of its cultivation, can, in some measure, rival the rich in the cheapness and goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition in its manufactures, at least if those manufactures suit the soil, climate, and situation, of the rich country. The silks of France are better and cheaper than those of England, because the silk manufacture, at least under the present high duties upon the importation ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... into the vernacular and let it loose among the people, they did an extremely dangerous thing, as the mischief which followed proves; but they incidentally let loose the sayings of Jesus in open competition with the sayings of Paul and Koheleth and David and Solomon and the authors of Job and the Pentateuch; and, as we have seen, Jesus seems to be the winning name. The glaring contradiction between his teaching and the practice of all the States and all ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... wish I hadn't started you on that. Get back to Bob. I thought Bob was on the Stock Exchange and Gerald in the Foreign Office. There can't be very much competition between them there. ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... to subscribers only, and any one desiring to enter the competition must send to this office their name and the date of their subscription; a number will then be ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... mighty stage, on which, it is true, you cannot establish a footing without merit and without labour—so much the better; in which strong and resolute rivals will urge you on to emulation, and then competition will task your keenest powers. Think what a glorious fate it is, to have an influence on the vast, but ever-growing mind of such a country,—to feel, when you retire from the busy scene, that you have played an unforgotten part—that you have been the medium, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... eaten; and it was his intention to stay among the former, group. Peter had come in his twenty years of life to a definite understanding of the things called "ideas" and "causes" and "religions." They were bait to catch suckers; and there is a continual competition between the suckers, who of course don't want to be caught, and those people of superior wits who want to catch them, and therefore are continually inventing new and more plausible and alluring kinds of bait. Peter had by now ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... children stayed through the year. Twenty-seven of the forty girls and seventeen of the thirty boys entered the regular high school course the next fall. They were thus put into competition with their former seventh and eighth grade comrades, although they had had only two-fifths as much academic work as the regular eighth grade pupils. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... the spirit of East Lancashire. Our men held concerts to the very last, and the football eleven survived three rounds of an Army Corps competition, losing their tie in the fourth round on a field in which shells burst repeatedly to the discomfort of the players. Captains J.F. Farrow, F. Hayes and E. Townson returned to strengthen the small band of officers, while R.J.R. Baker, who ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood—the sort of preference which was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... which in themselves are ethically {213} unjustifiable, and to which the only answer could be, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself"; prayers which carry the spirit of egoism, of competition, of bargaining even into our relations with the Most High; prayers of an imprecatory character such as meet and shock us in some of the psalms. How could these and their like possibly be granted by ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... getting it all taken up there. Our folk, sir, are quick enough at the game; but you don't want them to teach you, Mr Melmotte, that nothing encourages this kind of thing like competition. When they hear at St. Louis and Chicago that the thing is alive in London, they'll be alive there. And it's the same here, sir. When they know that the stock is running like wildfire in America, they'll make ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... The annual competition for an appointment as Market Porter is held at the end of September. It is a great event. There are generally many candidates, but only two or three, and sometimes less, of the best are picked. The posts are few and good, for the ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... Peninsula. Singapore, with its green lawns and trees, has a pleasant, though humid climate, cooler than that of Batavia, and quite comfortable although so near the equator. It is satisfying to know one place where the native races have a good time in competition with the whites, not only the Chinese, who have reached power and influence here, but also the Malays, natives of India, Arabs, etc. The Chinese rickshaw men here are of superb physique, and the excellence of the service ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... one fifty yards in front of it, and the other fifty yards behind; one of them burst on impact, the other didn't. The progress of a shell sounds far off like the hum of a mosquito, rising as it nears to a hoarse screech, and then "plump." We mind them very little now. There is great competition for the fragments, as "curios." It is cold, grey, and sunless today. Last night there was heavy rain, and our blankets are wet still. It seems the Boers are firing a Krupp at 7000 yards; our guns are only sighted up to 5000 yards, but we have managed to reach them by ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... it is, and thus everything was going on as well as possible until the other day, which was the feast of the patron saint of our town. The prefect, surrounded by his staff and the authorities, presided at the musical competition, and when he had finished his speech the distribution of medals began, which Paul Hamot, his private secretary, handed to those who were ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... for no opposition ought to stand in the way of the uplifting of the workers. I ... It's the system, Geordie!" he cried, as if bringing his mind back to the present. "It is the system that is wrong. It is immoral and evil in its foundations, and it forces the employers to do the things they do. Competition compels them to do things they would not have to do if there were a cooperative system of industry. Our people have to suffer for it all—they pay the price in ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... Children; The Land and the People; Christianity in Japan; The Hell Fire Business; Sam Jones and Boston Theology; Psychometry; The American Psychical Society; Progress of Spiritualism; The Folly of Competition; Insanities of War; The Sinaloa Colony; Medical Despotism; Mind in Nature Physiological Discoveries in the College of Therapeutics ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... It was undignified and irritating; for in this uninteresting competition the precious moments were flying, and my interview leading apparently ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... so," said he, sadly. "But really, sir, it isn't. You may think that love rules all things nowadays, but that is a fallacy. Of late years a rival concern has sprung up. I have found my office subjected to a most annoying competition which has attracted away from me a large number of my closest followers. In the days when we acknowledged ourselves to be purely heathen, love was regarded with respect, but now all that is changed. Opposite my office ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... by technical education. In no time as in our own has so much stress been laid upon the commercial side of our existence. New trades, new industries are springing up; specialization is becoming more far-reaching and more firmly established than ever before; competition is becoming keener; the application of science to the arts ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain

... adequate word. Even the most minor adjectives applicable to her are bound to be sheer superlatives. There was nothing she could not do better than any woman and than most men. Sing, play—bah!—as some rhetorician once said of old Nap, competition fled from her. Swim! She could have made a fortune and a name as a public performer. She was one of those rare women who can strip off all the frills of dress, and in simple swimming suit be more satisfying beautiful. Dress! She ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... I thought, a more practical statesman than Madison (time has made Madison more practical), and a less selfish one than Lee. As an orator, Mr. Henry demolished Madison with as much ease as Samson did the cords that bound him before he was shorn. Mr. Lee held a greater competition.... Mr. Lee was a polished gentleman. His person was not very good; and he had lost the use of one of his hands; but his manner was perfectly graceful. His language was always chaste, and, although somewhat too ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... way, remembering—I say that here in the City—remembering that the prime need is not for capitalists to exploit the land, but for settlers who shall make their permanent homes therein. Capital is a good servant, but a mighty poor master. No alien race should be permitted to come into competition with the settlers. Fortunately you have now in the Governor of East Africa, Sir Percy Girouard, a man admirably fitted to deal wisely and firmly with the many problems before him. He is on the ground ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... spite of their diligence numerous rivals come up to dispute it; it is necessary to share with a great number of noisy and voracious flies and insects. In the adult state they come out well from this competition; but as good parents they wish to save their larvae from it, as in a feeble condition these might suffer severely. They desire to lay up a carcass for their young alone, and with this object they bury it in the earth. The eggs also which will thus develop in the soil have ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... struggle to be the first to enter the deadly breach, the prize to the winner of the race being certain death! Highlanders and Sikhs, Punjabi Mahomedans, Dogras[15] and Pathans, all vied with each other in the generous competition.[16] ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... to be said in defence of men of letters on the business side, that literature is still an infant industry with us, and so far from having been protected by our laws it was exposed for ninety years after the foundation of the republic to the vicious competition of stolen goods. It is true that we now have the international copyright law at last, and we can at least begin to forget our shame; but literary property has only forty-two years of life under ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... own world, among his fellow rulers, rapidly grew. The few Earth girls he produced were eagerly seized. The fame of their beauty spread. The desire, the competition for them became keen. And Tako gradually conceived his great plan. A hundred or more of the overlords, each with his hundred retainers, were banded together for the enterprise under Tako's leadership. An army was organized; weapons and equipment ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... once created races of slaves. I know patriotism has become a narrow offensive sentiment which as long as it lives will maintain war and exhaust the world. I know that neither work nor material and moral prosperity, nor the noble refinements of progress, nor the wonders of art, need competition inspired by hate. In fact, I know that, on the contrary, these things are destroyed by arms. I know that the map of a country is composed of conventional lines and different names, that our innate love ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... in pronouncing its name. Some of us called it Off, some Owf! I knew I had heard the name somewhere, and I was racking my brains to think as Johnson set up our wee piano and I began to sing. Just as I finished my first song a rooster set up a violent crowing, in competition with me, ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... no competition from me," said Avenel. "Scotland is wide enough, and there are many manors to win, without plundering my benefactor. But prove to me, my reverend father, that my father was just to my mother—show me that I may call myself ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... those who should have advised him on the appointment of a successor to Yardley- Orde. There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil Service who had won his place and a university degree to boot in fair and open competition with the sons of the English. He was cultured, of the world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all, sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal. He had been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... upper course of neither is yet very fully established; and the Nile can compete only in length of course, not in the magnitude of its stream, or the fertility of the regions. There is one feature in which the Niger may defy competition from any river, either of the old or new world. This is the grandeur of its Delta. Along the whole coast, from the river of Formosa or Benin to that of Old Calabar, about 300 miles in length, there open into the Atlantic its successive estuaries, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... it; something like a race won by a one-year-old, with jockey, whip and spurs. He did not believe all he heard, of course. He knew, he lived with them, he was one of them. He knew the peculiar mania of the music-hall, the instinctive lie, uttered as if to discourage competition by giving it a fright at the start. To listen to them, it meant the horsewhip, the belt, all day long; going "through the mill," all the time. Among the people with the painted faces, it was a shot at martyrdom, a chance ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... examinations had come into vogue, there was no knowing who might be introduced; and it was understood generally through the establishment,—and I may almost say by the civil service at large, so wide was his fame,—that Mr Eames was very averse to the whole theory of competition. The "Devil take the hindmost" scheme he called it; and would then go on to explain that hindmost candidates were often the best gentlemen, and that, in this way, the Devil got the pick of the flock. And he was respected the more for this because it was known that on this subject he had fought some ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... operations of "aristocratic sport," the intelligent bird, following the precedent of Edgar Poe's Raven, should alight, unseen and uninvited, on some object of art in a fashionable ballroom. Here he would find himself at once in the thick of the brilliant competition. He would see a row of lovely archers, backed by a second row of older and more experienced markswomen. And in the human pigeons now cowering before their combined artillery he would recognise the heroes so lately engaged in dispatching thousands of the feathered branch of the family ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... men of that day. As he went down along Turner's Pike that day when industry was born in Bidwell, he thought of these men and of lesser rich men of Cleveland and Buffalo, and was afraid that in approaching Hugh he might be coming into competition with one of these men. As he hurried along under the gray sky, he however realized that the time for action had come and that he must at once put the plans that he had formed in his mind to the test of ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... enormously. Even in that they were in competition. They sat opposite each other, and their hands were constantly busy reaching over the table for condiments, bread, biscuits, olives, wine.... Verschoyle and Clara were in strong contrast to them, though both ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... limbs, and bright face, raised an instant competition, and half a dozen bids simultaneously met the ear of the auctioneer. Anxious, half-frightened, he looked from side to side, as he heard the clatter of contending bids,—now here, now there,—till the hammer ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... rather, he tried to make one. A rich parish decided that it could best honor God by building a new church, finer and costlier than anything else in the city, and invited several architects to submit plans. David entered the competition, not by the adroit methods Dick Holden practised, but in the simple open-handed fashion which alone was possible to him. He went to the chairman ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... could not be found a companion more serviceable to your son than Mr. De Q. He speaks the Ziph most beautifully. He writes it, I am told, classically. And if there were a Ziph nation as well as a Ziph language, I am satisfied that he would very soon be at the head of it; as he already is, beyond all competition, at the head of the Ziph literature." Lady Altamont, on receiving this, would infallibly have supposed him mad; she would have written so to all her Irish friends, and would have commended the poor gentleman to the care of his nearest kinsmen; and thus we ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... market-place of Ullerton in Leicestershire; an out-of-the-way sleepy place it is now, but was prosperous enough in those days, I daresay. This man (the grandfather) began the world well off, and amassed a large fortune before he had done with it. The lucky beggar lived in the days when free trade and competition were unknown, when tea was something like sixty shillings a pound, and when a psalm-singing sleek-haired fellow, with a reputation for wealth and honesty, might cheat his customers to his heart's content. He had one son, Matthew, who seems, from what I can gather, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... first there was a generous emulation, And then there was a general competition, To undertake the orphan's education: As Juan was a person of condition, It had been an affront on this occasion To talk of a subscription or petition; But sixteen dowagers, ten unwed she sages Whose tale belongs to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... then came, in which nothing of note in the construction occurred, and the next interesting date is 1418, when a competition for the design for the dome was announced, the work to be given eventually to one Filippo Brunelleschi, then an ambitious and nervously determined man, well known in Florence as an architect, of forty-one. Brunelleschi, who, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... the spirit of Loyola as the other from the spirit of Luther. During three generations religion had been the mainspring of politics. The revolutions and civil wars of France, Scotland, Holland, Sweden, the long struggle between Philip and Elizabeth, the bloody competition for the Bohemian crown, had all originated in theological disputes. But a great change now took place. The contest which was raging in Germany lost its religious character. It was now, on one side, less a contest for the spiritual ascendency of the Church of Rome than for the temporal ascendency ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... public duties, held himself obliged to discontinue the entertainments of to-morrow's festival: Nevertheless, that, unwilling so many good yeoman should depart without a trial of skill, he was pleased to appoint them, before leaving the ground, presently to execute the competition of archery intended for the morrow. To the best archer a prize was to be awarded, being a bugle-horn, mounted with silver, and a silken baldric richly ornamented with a medallion of St Hubert, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... easy to see the purpose of these regulations. They were an attempt to solve the social problem, to banish competition, and to put co-operation in its place. For some years the scheme was crowned with glorious success. The settlement grew; the trade flourished; the great firm of Drninger obtained a world-wide reputation; the women were skilled ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... constantly rising. The voice of the House of Commons and of the City loudly designated him as preeminently qualified to be the chief minister of finance. At length Sir Stephen Fox withdrew from the competition, though not with a very good grace. He wished it to be notified in the London Gazette that the place of First Lord had been offered to him, and declined by him. Such a notification would have been an affront to Montague; and Montague, flushed with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fare from Tacoma to Port Townsend, and find a moment later that some are paying only $1 for the same accommodations. Competition is the mother of these pleasant surprises, but it is worth thrice the original price—the enjoyment of this twilight cruise. More after-glow, much more, with the Olympian Mountains lying between us and the ocean. In the foreground is a golden flood with scarlet ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... has been incorporated for the purpose of manufacturing Household, Office, and Store Furniture with the view of making a specialty of certain grades of goods over which it will have entire control, thus avoiding the direct competition incident to the general trade. Yet it will to a limited extent handle a general line of goods common ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various



Words linked to "Competition" :   trial, tournament, tourney, dogfight, compete, queen, runner-up, cooperation, bout, king, tier, match, semifinalist, front-runner, enemy, price war, athletic contest, playoff, foe, chicken, spelling contest, business relation, race, social event, street fighter, championship, favorite, athletics, scratch, champion, second best, comer, field trial, group action, game, spelldown, rival, series, contestant, champ, spelling bee, world-beater, favourite, tilter, title-holder, cliffhanger, finalist



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