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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
adversary
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
old
▪ Again, the atmosphere is friendly with everyone recounting the day's activities whilst making new friends and meeting old adversaries.
▪ The two old adversaries, now both in their early sixties, have never met in person.
▪ But it will also be needed to pacify old adversaries, and to prevent small crises from becoming big ones.
▪ The two old adversaries are seeded to meet in Tuesday's final.
■ NOUN
politics
▪ Gamble argues that the adversary politics thesis over-generalises from a few instances to the whole of economic policy.
▪ The significant discontinuities elsewhere support the thesis of adversary politics.
▪ The adversary politics thesis developed by the reformers has also been variously challenged.
▪ They have been the commonplace stuff of the party political debate that is adversary politics.
▪ The three main diagnoses are those of government overload, adversary politics, and pluralist stagnation.
▪ A compatible but independent thesis is that of adversary politics.
▪ The effect of adversary politics in Britain is intensified by the rapid turnover of government personnel.
▪ The other argument deployed against the adversary politics thesis calls into doubt the relevance of the notion itself.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Quijano wanted to ensure success against his political adversaries.
▪ Symes grabbed his adversary by the throat and wrestled him to the ground.
▪ The peace talks proved that even great adversaries were capable of cooperation.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But the same is not true of our potential adversaries.
▪ By 2015, two populations, composed of very different ethnic groups, faced each other as adversaries across a great divide.
▪ Like the trained warrior that I was, I knew not to oppose an adversary head-on.
▪ The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in heaven.
▪ The adversary politics thesis developed by the reformers has also been variously challenged.
▪ The bipolar adversary process often involves paying little attention to these wider interests.
▪ The significant discontinuities elsewhere support the thesis of adversary politics.
▪ Yet there is that nearly irresistible need for lawyers to smear their adversary, even a grieving widow.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Adversary

Adversary \Ad"ver*sa*ry\, a.

  1. Opposed; opposite; adverse; antagonistic. [Archaic]
    --Bp. King.

  2. (Law) Having an opposing party; not unopposed; as, an adversary suit.

Adversary

Adversary \Ad`ver*sa*ry\, n.; pl. Adversaries. [OE. adversarie, direct fr. the Latin, and adversaire, fr. OF. adversier, aversier, fr. L. adversarius (a.) turned toward, (n.) an adversary. See Adverse.] One who is turned against another or others with a design to oppose or resist them; a member of an opposing or hostile party; an opponent; an antagonist; an enemy; a foe.

His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries.
--Shak.

Agree with thine adversary quickly.
--Matt. v. 25.

It may be thought that to vindicate the permanency of truth is to dispute without an adversary.
--Beattie.

The Adversary, The Satan, or the Devil.

Syn: Adversary, Enemy, Opponent, Antagonist.

Usage: Enemy is the only one of these words which necessarily implies a state of personal hostility. Men may be adversaries, antagonists, or opponents to each other in certain respects, and yet have no feelings of general animosity. An adversary may be simply one who is placed for a time in a hostile position, as in a lawsuit, an argument, in chess playing, or at fence. An opponent is one who is ranged against another (perhaps passively) on the opposing side; as a political opponent, an opponent in debate. An antagonist is one who struggles against another with active effort, either in a literal fight or in verbal debate.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
adversary

mid-14c., aduersere, from Anglo-French adverser (13c.), Old French adversaire "adversary, opponent, enemy," or directly from Latin adversarius "opponent, adversary, rival," noun use of adjective meaning "opposite, hostile, contrary," literally "turned toward one," from adversus "turned against" (see adverse). The Latin word is glossed in Old English by wiðerbroca.

Wiktionary
adversary

n. An opponent or rival.

WordNet
adversary

n. someone who offers opposition [syn: antagonist, opponent, opposer, resister] [ant: agonist]

Wikipedia
Adversary (comics)

The Adversary is a fictional character, a demonic supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.

Adversary

An adversary is generally considered to be a person, group, or force that opposes and/or attacks.

Adversary may also refer to:

  • Satan ("adversary" in Hebrew), in Judeo-Christian religion
Adversary (cryptography)

In cryptography, an adversary (rarely opponent, enemy) is a malicious entity whose aim is to prevent the users of the cryptosystem from achieving their goal (primarily privacy, integrity, and availability of data). An adversary's efforts might take the form of attempting to discover secret data, corrupting some of the data in the system, spoofing the identity of a message sender or receiver, or forcing system downtime.

Actual adversaries, as opposed to idealized ones, are referred to as attackers. Not surprisingly, the former term predominates in the cryptographic and the latter in the computer security literature. Eve, Mallory, Oscar and Trudy are all adversarial characters widely used in both types of texts.

This notion of an adversary helps both intuitive and formal reasoning about cryptosystems by casting security analysis of cryptosystems as a 'game' between the users and a centrally co-ordinated enemy. The notion of security of a cryptosystem is meaningful only with respect to particular attacks (usually presumed to be carried out by particular sorts of adversaries).

There are several types of adversaries depending on what capabilities or intentions they are presumed to have. Adversaries may be

  • computationally bounded or unbounded (i.e. in terms of time and storage resources),
  • eavesdropping or Byzantine (i.e. passively listening on or actively corrupting data in the channel),
  • static or adaptive (i.e. having fixed or changing behavior),
  • mobile or non-mobile (e.g. in the context of network security)

and so on. In actual security practice, the attacks assigned to such adversaries are often seen, so such notional analysis is not merely theoretical.

How successful an adversary is at breaking a system is measured by its advantage. An adversary's advantage is the difference between the adversary's probability of breaking the system and the probability that the system can be broken by simply guessing. The advantage is specified as a function of the security parameter.

Usage examples of "adversary".

Serpent, Adad is my chosen adversary, the first major step in my rise to power.

Not Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven ay, when His adversary from adamantine chains Cursed him, he trembled like a slave.

Special Forces units trained in Aggressor tactics playing the role of the adversary.

He dwelt unnecessarily, I thought, on my prior loss to Makato and on the bout I had won by forfeit because Makato had incapacitated my Aikido adversary.

Meliboeus of might, of power, of riches, and of friends, despising the power of his adversaries: and said utterly, that he anon should wreak him on his foes, and begin war.

Her immediate adversary, the one she had called Ashe, closed quickly, directly in front of her.

He bravely endured her taunts, courageously defeated all her adversaries, and finally won her admiration and respect to such a degree that she bade him ride beside her, and humbly asked his pardon for having so grievously misjudged him.

The inconsiderate boaster was guilty of a double mistake for which he paid the penalty of his life, but his adversary was as much wanting in delicacy, for in such matters rightly-minded men do not venture upon betting.

Having delivered this home thrust Hans bolted round a corner and disappeared, while I waited trembling to see what happened to his adversary.

His left Colt bucked and the adversary jerked backwards onto the grass.

As for Wilkes himself, he was nothing daunted by it, for after indulging in many witticisms at the expense of his adversaries, he declared that he would stand again for Middlesex, and expressed his conviction that he should be returned.

The adversaries of the Deists enjoyed the same privilege, and did not hesitate to improve it.

If Lauren did not possess the sodopathic skills necessary to befuddle Demain Jones, Adrienne was an entirely different breed of adversary.

If Lauren did not possess the sociopathic skills necessary to befuddle Demain Jones, Adrienne was an entirely different breed of adversary.

The suspicion, however, did exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority.