Word.ws English Dictionary

versus

/ˈvɜːsəs//ˈvɝsəs/

versus preposition: against; in opposition to.

Preposition

versus

  1. Against; in opposition to.
    • It is the Packers versus the Steelers in the Super Bowl.
    Synonyms:
    vs, vs., v
  2. Compared with, as opposed to.
    • 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
    • If, for example, we select random people entering a workout gym, versus if we pick random people entering a hospital, we will get very different samples.2005, Robert E. Weiss, Modeling Longitudinal Data, Springer, →ISBN, page 104
  3. Bringing a legal action against, as used in the title of a court case in which the first party indicates the plaintiff (or appellant or the like), and the second indicates the defendant (or respondent or the like).
    • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.
    Synonyms:
    v, v.
  4. Interacting with, especially to record reactions
  5. Mashed up with.
    • Kiss Me Thru The Phone vs. Last Friday Night
  6. Indicating one group or artist remixing another.
    • The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq

Verb

US/ˈvɝs/

versus (third-person singular simple present versuses, present participle versusing, simple past and past participle versused)

  1. To face in competition
  2. To fight

versus meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

versus in Hindi

versus, contra
बनाम banām

versus in Marathi

versus, against
विरुद्ध viruddha

versus in Urdu

in opposition to
بمقابلہ bamuqābila
compared with
مقابلہ bamuqābila

versus in Bengali

বনাম, বিরুদ্ধে, বিপক্ষে
More languagesFewer languages
versus in Malayalam
എതിരായി, താരതമ്യേന
versus in Nepali
भर्ससिङ
versus in Arabic
فِي مُقَابِل fī muqābil, ضِِدَّ ḍiidda, عَلَى اَلْعَكْس ʕalā l-ʕaks
versus in Malay
lawan
versus in Vietnamese
đối, đối đầu, đấu với, kiện

Examples of versus in a sentence

  • Foreign markets were lost as our currency rose versus their valuta.
  • We must always make a distinction that right versus wrong is different from legal and illegal.
  • The grandmaster gave his opponents significant time odds, of one minute versus ten minutes.

All 40 example sentences with versus

Synonyms of versus

Forms of versus

third-person singular presentversuses
present participleversusing
past participleversused
pastversused

Origin of versus

From Middle English versus, borrowed from Latin versus (“facing”), past participle of vertere (“to turn, change, overthrow, destroy”).

Words formed from versus

Phrases with versus

Words that rhyme with versus

Questions about versus

What does versus mean?
Versus means against; in opposition to.
What is versus in Hindi?
Versus in Hindi is बनाम (banām). See Versus meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is versus?
Versus can be a preposition or a verb.
How do you pronounce versus?
Versus is pronounced /ˈvɜːsəs/ (UK).

Words near versus in the dictionary

  1. Verstraete
  2. Verstraetes
  3. versts
  4. versty
  5. versual
  6. versus
  7. versute
  8. vert
  9. vert ramp
  10. vert ramps
  11. vert russe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: versus (page history and authors); बनाम (Hindi) (page history and authors); विरुद्ध (Marathi) (page history and authors); versus (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); versus (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); versus (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-versus.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-versus.wav.

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