rival Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun the contestant you hope to defeat
    contender; competitor; competition; challenger.
    • he had respect for his rivals
    • he wanted to know what the competition was doing
  2. verb be equal to in quality or ability
    touch; equal; match.
    • Nothing can rival cotton for durability
    • Your performance doesn't even touch that of your colleagues
    • Her persistence and ambition only matches that of her parents
  3. verb be the rival of, be in competition with
    • we are rivaling for first place in the race

WordNet

Ri"val noun
Etymology
F. rival (cf. It. rivale), L. rivales two neigbors having the same brook in common, rivals, fr. rivalis belonging to a brook, fr. rivus a brook. Cf. Rivulet, Rete.
Definitions
  1. 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. Shak.
  2. 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. ✍ "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." Trench. Syn. -- Competitor; emulator; antagonist.
Ri"val adjective
Definitions
  1. 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. Macaulay.
Ri"val transitive verb
Wordforms
imperfect & past participle Rivaled or Rivalled; present participle & verbal noun Rivaling or Rivalling
Definitions
  1. To stand in competition with; to strive to gain some object in opposition to; as, to rival one in love.
  2. To strive to equal or exel; to emulate.
    To rival thunder in its rapid course. Dryden.
Ri"val intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. To be in rivalry. Obs. Shak.

Webster 1913