The act of competing as for profit or a prize

Usage examples of contention.

OF THE MULTIPLE ISSUES in contention between Britain and the new United States of America, and that John Adams had to address as minister, nearly all were holdovers from the Treaty of Paris, agreements made but not resolved, concerning debts, the treatment of Loyalists, compensation for slaves and property confiscated by the British, and the continued presence of British troops in America.

The march of science, which had been stopped by the local fogs of Todos Santos some fifty years, had not disturbed the simple Aesculapius of the province with heterodox theories: he still purged and bled like Sangrado, and met the priest at the deathbed of his victims with a pious satisfaction that had no trace of skeptical contention.

The fact that John and Paul did not give equal space to his songs on the albums had been a point of contention between them for some time.

I succeeded in my contention that the Biscayan cook should be kept at my expense.

Peter pacing, working the latest MENSA-level brainteaser in his hands as he considered the issues of contention and fired thoughts from different sections of the room.

The dictates of true policy dissuaded her from contributing to her further conquest in that kingdom, which would have proved the source of contention among the allies, depressed the house of Bourbon below the standard of importance which the balance of Europe required it should maintain, and aggrandize the states-general at the expense of Great Britain.

Northumbria had always been a bone of contention amongst the warring powers, wedged as it was between the Saxon kingdom to the south and the lands of the Scots, Cumbrians and Strathclyde Welsh to the north and northwest.

Nevertheless, it is my contention that dialog is realistic when, and only when, it reflects the situation as you describe it and when it produces the effect you wish to produce.

Yet, even in the East, the sphere of contention is usually limited to the princes of the reigning house, and as soon as the more fortunate competitor has removed his brethren by the sword and the bowstring, he no longer entertains any jealousy of his meaner subjects.

Though Burnett refused to sever, or separate, the trials, Ford continued to raise additional issues to support that contention.

Admetus and Alcestis, we have all the personages and machinery necessary for one of those erotic contentions, in the present poem we see the personages and the machinery actually at work, upon another scene and under other guises.

I ascribe this to the fact that when we encounter a fellow countryman, we tend to exaggerate ourselves, to adopt categorizable modes of behavior, to advertise our classifiable eccentricities and political views, anything that may later prove a bone of contention, all so we may be more readily recognizable to the other.

Like Clifford, he was a capital banjoist, but he insisted that cricket was far superior to baseball, and this was the only bone of contention that ever fell between the two.

Eden had the gift of prose granted to only a handful of happy essayists, yet his contentions were firmly rooted in the academic traditions of anthropological research and elegantly documented.

The captaincy was most in dispute between Dietrich Schill and Berthold Schmidt, who, in the heat and constancy of contention, were gradually losing likeness to man.