adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a hostile bid (=an offer to buy another company that does not want to be bought)
▪ Airtours launched a £221m hostile bid for Owners Abroad.
a hostile environment (=with many difficulties and dangers)
▪ It is difficult to see how anything can survive in such a hostile environment.
a hostile reception
▪ When reporters arrived at the house, they got a hostile reception.
aggressive/hostile (=showing anger)
▪ Their attitude suddenly became more aggressive.
enemy/hostile territory
▪ Patterson had never flown so deep into enemy territory before.
hostile takeover (=when the takeover is not wanted by the company being bought)
▪ He prevented a hostile takeover of the company.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ The feistier sort of Republican is as hostile to big government by indirect means as to the direct variety.
▪ You also wrongly stated that we use scare tactics such as hostile looks or suggestive comments to keep women away.
▪ Well, isn't that too bad? she thought angrily, and remained as hostile and unfriendly as he was.
even
▪ Equally, do not be discouraged by hostile letters to the editor or even hostile editorials.
▪ In 1757 Woolman made a second journey into the South, where he found slave owners tense and even hostile to him.
▪ Before visiting the remote north, I had rather expected the folk there to be rough, uncouth, possibly even hostile.
▪ The belief that technics must replace politics makes technocrats sceptical about and even hostile towards politicians and political institutions.
▪ It might have been compassionate, or amused, or even hostile.
▪ People frequently end up disillusioned, and even hostile to the part the church has played, rather than finding it helpful.
▪ First, the view that oral culture is irrelevant or even hostile to the acquisition of literacy.
▪ A pupil entering a new class may initially define the situation as threatening and even hostile.
extremely
▪ This can be traced in the working-class response to birth-control propaganda, which was often extremely hostile.
▪ I would say that Courtaulds is reasonably healthy in an extremely hostile environment.
▪ The experience was not one much enjoyed by the Labour party, certain sections of which were extremely hostile to the arrangement.
increasingly
▪ Amid an increasingly hostile war of words, Finley has criticized Racicot for reneging on a promise to cooperate with federal authorities.
less
▪ The display was less hostile than the girl riots of today are meant to be.
▪ The modern university has been more welcoming and less hostile to women.
more
▪ Brown as a more radical, more hostile and more dangerous rival.
▪ If I understand the cultural pattern correctly, they should be more hostile to the people up the hill than to us.
▪ Public opinion has grown more hostile, however, as a result of a series of recent accidents and cover-ups.
▪ And that he was getting more and more hostile.
▪ These found, in the main, that Blacks had a consistently more hostile attitude to the police.
▪ The Commission has been more and more hostile to his activities.
▪ Some male anti-suffragists used a more hostile and demeaning picture of women's place reminiscent of Spencerian Darwinism to justify their arguments.
▪ Kozyrev and Filatov were replaced by officials with views more hostile to the West.
most
▪ The sack of Rome in 410 marked the most hostile period in the relations between Alaric and the imperial court.
▪ The Michaelmas term saw me at my most hostile.
often
▪ The relationship is often hostile rather than cooperative, but this can be treated as just a reversal of sign.
▪ Vigorous and often hostile debate has persisted among the advocates of these three conceptions of how politics works.
▪ Not surprisingly, relations between the two black communities are often hostile.
▪ These conditions embraced the realities of survival in an often hostile environment, and the mysteries of birth and death.
▪ They have few outside contacts and white society is uncaring and often hostile towards them.
openly
▪ But as her relationship with Eric deepened, he'd grown wary, sometimes openly hostile.
▪ General have been openly hostile toward Doctors Community.
▪ Dub reggae had themes dealing with the overthrow of Babylon and which were openly hostile to the white world.
▪ As it was, those legislators owed black voters nothing and were therefore free to take positions openly hostile to them.
▪ But the pair, openly hostile by the end of last year, will patch up their mutual differences.
▪ Many of the smaller cities are openly hostile toward the City of Los Angeles.
▪ The opposition parties had mostly been unenthusiastic, if not openly hostile, about parity legislation.
▪ The city population was not openly hostile but the humans were watched silently as they made their way through the streets.
potentially
▪ The possibility of a potentially hostile power occupying bases in Dalmatia was a matter of life and death to the republic.
▪ Unfettered free trade is potentially hostile to environmental concerns and may put human health and safety at risk.
so
▪ I am not quite so hostile to them as other hon. Members are.
▪ I took him to therapy-and he was so angry and so hostile, and so incapable of dealing with his impulses.
▪ The medium that she was so hostile to served her well.
▪ That was why he had been so hostile at the beginning, why he'd known all about the family.
▪ Why is the United States so hostile towards you?
very
▪ They can be a very hostile crowd when you start teaching them, though.
▪ And he started out as a very hostile child.
▪ Consternation on all sides-and a lot of very hostile criticism of both Skakkebaek's methodology and his conclusions.
▪ He may also be very hostile towards himself, belittling himself.
▪ Really, he was very hostile to foreigners.
▪ He was very anti-social, very hostile.
▪ Initially, Hofmann was very hostile to Perkin's intention to leave academic research to exploit his discovery commercially.
▪ Television has altered people's lives immensely -I feel very hostile to it.
■ NOUN
action
▪ A Ministry of Defence spokesman said there was no evidence of hostile action.
attitude
▪ A combination of lax discipline and hostile attitudes on the part of both parents encourages very aggressive and poorly controlled behaviour in their offspring.
▪ Emily paced around the book-lined study and blamed her father for his hostile attitude to Craig.
▪ Given Ben Silcock's apparently hostile attitude to authority, how would supervision work?
▪ These found, in the main, that Blacks had a consistently more hostile attitude to the police.
▪ Her first impressions, she supposed, had been gained merely from his hostile attitude at the fountain.
audience
▪ On the other, there are politically hostile audiences.
▪ A hostile audience would, in minutes, change into one of sympathy and cooperation.
▪ Mr Grosz was the only senior politician yesterday with the courage to stand up for Communism in front of a hostile audience.
bid
▪ But some societies fear hostile bids - a subject on the agenda at the Building Societies Association council meeting tomorrow.
▪ In a hostile bid, very little will be forthcoming.
▪ Most bids were hostile, or were responses to actual or threatened hostile bids.
▪ For example, if the sale is a demerger or unbundling process used to counter a hostile bid, timing will be critical.
▪ There have been a few hostile bids, most notably that by Paribas for a conglomerate, Navigation Mixte.
▪ But shareholding rules make hostile bids hard to win.
▪ However, because a Court Scheme requires the co-operation of the target it is not a viable alternative to a hostile bid.
climate
▪ Private practice is burdened by bureaucratic demands in a hostile climate.
crowd
▪ They can be a very hostile crowd when you start teaching them, though.
▪ When finally the passengers were allowed to disembark, Gandhi was attacked by a hostile crowd.
▪ The coach was returned to the capital under armed escort, where its occupants were greeted by a silent, hostile crowd.
▪ There was a hostile crowd and to save himself and prevent Sweeney from escaping, Rose hit him twice with his baton.
▪ In Antrim police had to rescue a man from a hostile crowd when he was pulled from his car.
▪ Dinkins attempted to visit the area on Aug. 21, but was repelled by hostile crowds.
environment
▪ Biomorphs should interact, in the computer, with a simulation of a hostile environment.
▪ They died for their quest for comfort in a hostile environment.
▪ These conditions embraced the realities of survival in an often hostile environment, and the mysteries of birth and death.
▪ Once again, you navigate dark passageways and hostile environments, killing everything that moves.
▪ They are used to dealing with harsh conditions in a hostile environment.
▪ Objectionable pictures have been deemed to contribute to a hostile environment.
▪ I would say that Courtaulds is reasonably healthy in an extremely hostile environment.
▪ Against a panoramic backdrop, we see orphaned P.K. growing up in a hostile environment.
fire
▪ Otherwise, architecture was largely reduced to stubby tower-tops, inky and indigo, from which hostile fire poured.
▪ Crews had to be ready for hostile fire from the ground.
▪ None of these sources of hostile fire was ever pinned down.
▪ He was the first killed in hostile fire since the United Nations assumed control of the mission 10 months ago.
forces
▪ Security advisers are confident the prince will be relatively safe from hostile forces.
▪ There are times when it seems that only hostile forces exist, that no helpful ones are about.
▪ And men can be bewildered by the co-existence of these apparently hostile forces.
▪ He built high walls to protect his people from hostile forces.
▪ But we also attribute to him the power to mediate between those same concerns and the hostile forces of disease.
reaction
▪ The high-handed way in which Washington dropped the idea on its Western partners accounts for some the hostile reaction it has received.
▪ Despite the hostile reaction, Prusiner continued his research, publishing papers and giving lectures that some called near-religious experiences.
▪ The environment - urban or rural - and the risk of hostile reaction from locals.
reception
▪ The hostile reception of Alford's views led him to reflect that he was being denied the parliamentary right of free speech.
▪ They had not been prepared for the fierce extremes of climate, or for the hostile reception of the natives.
▪ He didn't seem in the least put-out by the hostile reception.
▪ The two men were confused by the hostile reception the mob gave them, and they had reason to be.
▪ But when a camera crew arrived at the rectory, they got a hostile reception.
▪ April 1983 Generally speaking, however, family planning has met with a hostile reception.
response
▪ Only from the windows of a derelict tower block squatted by women was there any deliberately hostile response.
▪ I shall describe later the hostile response to this demand, putting it into the context of sixteenth-century protest and rebellion.
takeover
▪ But it's now facing a hostile takeover bid by a Suffolk based-brewery, Greene King.
▪ The Abingdon-based Morland brewers will know tomorrow if they've managed to fight off a hostile takeover bid.
▪ Round one to Morlands ... brewery fight off hostile takeover.
▪ The only way they can protect themselves against hostile takeovers is to get the stock price up.
▪ Shareholders can protect themselves from hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts by not agreeing to sell their shareholdings at a discount.
▪ The only difference with hostile takeovers may be that the prices are higher.
territory
▪ The deeper forests are virtually hostile territory where few humans venture.
▪ The North, on the other hand, would have to stretch its supply lines over vast areas of hostile territory.
▪ He was really on his own now, and in less than two minutes he would be flying over hostile territory.
▪ Most of our navigation was pure pilotage and dead reckoning over unfamiliar, sometimes hostile territory and some very bad weather.
▪ They are in forbidding, hostile territory.
world
▪ They were two women together now in a hostile world.
▪ Gradually this hardens and the animal can again venture into a hostile world.
▪ Local communities became less a defence against the pressures of a hostile world, more a basis for active resistance:.
▪ He found himself in a hostile world and yet adapted by means of a specialism that nobody else thought worthwhile.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Hostile forces have taken control of cities in the north of the country.
▪ A hostile audience refused to listen to Senator Drummond's reply.
▪ He was hostile towards me when I arrived, and the situation did not improve over the next few days.
▪ Local people are hostile towards the plan, which would involve a significant tax increase.
▪ Lydon was openly hostile to any kind of criticism of the project.
▪ Several of the neighbors had become openly hostile to one another.
▪ The Antarctic survey team will be using vehicles specially designed to cope with the hostile environment.
▪ The ships had travelled thousands of miles through hostile waters to converge in the Atlantic.
▪ There was a crowd of hostile demonstrators waiting outside her door.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ In this hostile ideological jungle, little clearings of socialist culture had to be created painfully.
▪ It will be physical, confrontational and, quite likely, hostile.
▪ Life can evolve representations of itself capable of thriving in environments that seem hostile now.
▪ Like divorce, it is painful and sometimes very costly to buy out a hostile partner.
▪ Managers who did encounter hostile, judgmental, or disinterested reactions from their bosses rarely initiated such interactions again.
▪ Only from the windows of a derelict tower block squatted by women was there any deliberately hostile response.
▪ These conditions embraced the realities of survival in an often hostile environment, and the mysteries of birth and death.
▪ They were two women together now in a hostile world.