Competition

competition
    n 1: a business relation in which two parties compete to gain
         customers; "business competition can be fiendish at times"
    2: an occasion on which a winner is selected from among two or
       more contestants [syn: {contest}, {competition}]
    3: the act of competing as for profit or a prize; "the teams
       were in fierce contention for first place" [syn:
       {competition}, {contention}, {rivalry}] [ant: {cooperation}]
    4: the contestant you hope to defeat; "he had respect for his
       rivals"; "he wanted to know what the competition was doing"
       [syn: {rival}, {challenger}, {competitor}, {competition},
       {contender}]
    

Competition \Com`pe*ti"tion\, n. [L. competition. See
   {Compete}.]
   The act of seeking, or endeavoring to gain, what another is
   endeavoring to gain at the same time; common strife for the
   same objects; strife for superiority; emulous contest;
   rivalry, as for approbation, for a prize, or as where two or
   more persons are engaged in the same business and each
   seeking patronage; -- followed by for before the object
   sought, and with before the person or thing competed with.
   [1913 Webster]

         Competition to the crown there is none, nor can be.
                                                  --Bacon.
   [1913 Webster]

         A portrait, with which one of Titian's could not come
         in competition.                          --Dryden.
   [1913 Webster]

         There is no competition but for the second place.
                                                  --Dryden.
   [1913 Webster]

         Where competition does not act at all there is complete
         monopoly.                                --A. T.
                                                  Hadley.

   Syn: Emulation; rivalry; rivalship; contest; struggle;
        contention; opposition; jealousy. See {Emulation}.
        [1913 Webster]
    

51 Moby Thesaurus words for "competition":
      antagonism, antipathy, bad blood, championship, clashing,
      collision, competitor, concours, conflict, contention, contest,
      contrariety, contrariness, corrival, cross-purposes,
      cutthroat competition, disaccord, dissension, emulation, enmity,
      event, fractiousness, friction, game, gamesmanship, hostility,
      inimicalness, jockeying, lifemanship, match, meet, meeting,
      negativeness, noncooperation, obstinacy, one-upmanship, oppugnancy,
      perverseness, recalcitrance, refractoriness, rencontre, repugnance,
      rivalry, strife, striving, struggle, tournament, tug-of-war,
      uncooperativeness, vying, warfare