agon

Noun

agon (countable and uncountable, plural agons or agones)

1. (countable) A struggle or contest; conflict; especially between the protagonist and antagonist in a literary work.
   • It was not ecological pressure or shortages of protein, as anthropologist Marvin Harris has claimed; institutionalized violence, as opposed to the stylized agons of hunters over grievances, was the shadow side of the Neolithic Revolution.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 134
   • One way of reading Beowulf is to think of it as three agons in the hero's life[.]1999, Seamus Heaney, “Introduction”, in Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page xiv
2. (countable) An intellectual conflict or apparent competition of ideas.
   • Freud's originality stemmed from his aggression and ambition in his agon with biology.1986 March 23, Harold Bloom, “Freud, the Greatest Modern Writer”, in New York Times
   • The point, though, is that to fully and uncritically surrender to such agon against individuals is to invite one's own ethical degeneration; […]2022, China Miéville, chapter 6, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC
3. (countable) A contest in ancient Greece, as in athletics or music, in which prizes were awarded.
4. (uncountable) A two-player board game played on a hexagonally-tiled board, popular in Victorian times.

   Synonyms:

   queen's guard