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compete

verbcommon in dialogue

  • //kəmˈpiːt//
  • //kəmˈpiʈ//
  • //ˈkɔmpiʈ//

To be in battle or in a rivalry with another for the same thing, position, or reward; to contend.

verb

  1. 1

    To be in battle or in a rivalry with another for the same thing, position, or reward; to contend.

    Negga, who was born in Ethiopia but grew up in Limerick, already has a clutch of Best Actress nominations under her belt for Loving but this is the most high profile to date. She's won rave reviews for her performance since the movie's premiere at Cannes in May, where it competed for the Palme d'Or.

    "No. But one, or both of those men, may prove to be worse. That second man was Addison Berg, and he's agent for a firm of submarine boat builders who are rivals of dad's. Berg has been trying to find out why we abandoned our intention of competing for the Government prize."

    The idea behind Sir Montagu's gift is that there should be for the amateur clubs a trophy which will take the place of the Stanley Cup, now becoming a trophy for which professional clubs will alone compete.

  2. 2

    To be in a position in which it is possible to win or triumph.

    Now, when it comes to meeting the larger challenges we face as a nation, I realize that finding this unity is easier said than done – especially in Washington. But if we want to compete on the world stage as well as we’ve competed in the world’s games, we need to find common ground.

  3. 3

    To take part in a contest, game or similar event.

  4. 4

    To strive to achieve or obtain something which another also strives for, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French competer, from Latin competere (“to coincide, to be equal to, to be capable of”), from com- (“with”) + petō (“to seek; to aim for, strive for”). Compare Latin competītor (“competitor”).

Forms

past tense
competed
past participle
competed
present participle
competing
third person singular
competes
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).