Pop off before a bid for the other side

Usage examples of opponent.

The address in the commons was ultimately agreed to after a most acrimonious debate, protracted by the Irish members and their opponents far beyond the limits usual on such occasions.

In 1851 they were the persistent and acrimonious opponents of freedom, religious, political, and commercial, and by their eloquence stimulated those who sympathised with them, and incensed those who believed that a great economical victory had been accomplished by the free-trade legislation of Sir Robert Peel, which was irreversible.

Our opponents after first admitting the unity go on to make our soul dependent on something else, something in which we have no longer the soul of this or that, even of the universe, but a soul of nowhere, a soul belonging neither to the kosmos, nor to anything else, and yet vested with all the function inherent to the kosmic soul and to that of every ensouled thing.

Had Aikido or Kung-fu been similarly restricted, with penalties given for injury to the opponent, this tournament might have had a very different complexion.

Micum began with the basics, teaching Alec how to grip the weapon so that it balanced to his advantage, what stances presented the smallest target to an opponent, and simple slash and parry maneuvers.

Rather anomalous evidence was quite often the center of serious, longstanding controversy within the very heart of elite scientific circles, with advocates holding scientific credentials and positions just as prestigious as those of the opponents.

By antagonizing this declaration the Democrats strove to convince the country that it was the accepted doctrine of their political opponents, and that they were themselves the true and tried friends of the Union.

Nevertheless Sir Robert Vansittart, chief diplomatic adviser to the Foreign Secretary and one of the leading opponents in London of the appeasement of Hitler, saw Kleist on the afternoon of his arrival, and Winston Churchill, still in the political wilderness in Britain, received him the next day.

It is in this broader sense, then, that the opponents of the Marxians justly claim that Socialism is atheistic, anti-religious, and immoral.

The more popular support the Ottoman rulers garnered through the ages, the more they sought to sustain their authoritarianism without resort to force, but instead by building bridges to key sectors of the societies they ruled, by allowing others to share in the spoils and by never totally vanquishing their opponents, but instead always leaving them a way out so that they might one day be turned into friends.

With absolute disregard of his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like a football-player shunting off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed that they both went down together.

Meanwhile Will hurled an otherwise useless blunderbuss at the nose of his opponent, which made it easy to disable him too when they closed.

His blunderbuss was underneath the borrowed overalls, and he had no time to fumble for it before his opponent had pounced on him and caught his throat in a deadly grip.

Raeburn, and consequently had heard enough of the truth about him to disbelieve the gross libels which were constantly being circulated by the unscrupulous among his opponents.

He wanted to preserve the Blue Devils by coaching their opponents to success.