Word.ws English Dictionary

adversarial

UK/ˌæd.vəˈsɛə.ɹi.əl/US/ˌæd.vɚˈsɛɚ.i.əl/

adversarial adjective: characteristic of, or in the manner of, an adversary; combative, hostile, opposed.

Adjective

adversarial (comparative more adversarial, superlative most adversarial)

  1. Characteristic of, or in the manner of, an adversary; combative, hostile, opposed.
    • In polling by the Pew Research Center in November 2008, fully half the respondents thought the two parties would cooperate more in the coming year, versus only 36 percent who thought the climate would grow more adversarial.2012 November 7, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times
    • The White Paper therefore aims to tackle complexity rather then ownership of the railways, and to eliminate "the adversarial relationships between operators, suppliers, NR and government".2021 June 2, “Network News: Simplification, not nationalisation”, in RAIL, number 932, page 9
  2. In which issues are tried through the presentation of evidence and argument by adverse parties, with no or limited inquiry by the court's own initiative.
    • Canada uses an adversarial system of criminal justice, whereas France uses an inquisitorial model.

adversarial meaning in Urdu and Arabic

adversarial in Urdu

دشمنانہ, مخالفانہ, رقیبانہ

adversarial in Arabic

characteristic of, or in the manner of, an adversary
عدائي

Examples of adversarial in a sentence

  • If your hypothesis is correct, it likely will win out in an adversarial collaboration.
  • We have done rather well with our open and adversarial way.
  • They wanted to try an approach known as adversarial collaboration, in which scientists with opposing theories join forces with neutral researchers.

All 10 example sentences with adversarial

Antonyms of adversarial

Forms of adversarial

comparativemore adversarial
superlativemost adversarial

Origin of adversarial

Probably from adversary + -al

Words formed from adversarial

Phrases with adversarial

Questions about adversarial

What does adversarial mean?
Adversarial means characteristic of, or in the manner of, an adversary; combative, hostile, opposed.
What is adversarial in Urdu?
Adversarial in Urdu is دشمنانہ, مخالفانہ, رقیبانہ. See Adversarial meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is adversarial?
Adversarial is an adjective.
How do you pronounce adversarial?
Adversarial is pronounced /ˌæd.vəˈsɛə.ɹi.əl/ (UK).

Words near adversarial in the dictionary

  1. advergence
  2. advermation
  3. Adversane
  4. adversant
  5. adversaria
  6. adversarial
  7. adversarial collaboration
  8. adversarial collaborations
  9. adversarial stylometry
  10. adversarial system
  11. adversarial systems

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: adversarial (page history and authors); adversarial (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Twistedmeta1-adversarial.wav.

Cite this entry: “adversarial.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/adversarial. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.