antagonist (antagonist)

and a. [ Antagonist of heaven's Almighty King. Milton , P. L., x. 387. Where you find your antagonist beginning to grow warm, put an end to the dispute by some genteel badinage. Chesterfield, Letters, Emerson, War. Trade, as all men know, is the antagonist of war. 2. In an at., a muscle which acts in opposition to another: as, a flexor, which bends a part, is the antagonist of an extensor, which extends it. Syn. 1. Adversary, Antagonist, Opponent, etc. (see ad versary ), opposer, rival, a ailant. II. a . Counteracting; opposing; combating: as, antagonist forces; an antagonist muscle. The flexors and extensors of a limb, as also the abductors and adductors, have to each other the relation of anta go nist muscles. We find decisive struggle beginning between tagonist tendencies when the an this [Aryan] civilization. J. Fiske, Amer. Polit. Ideas, p. 126. antagonistic (an-tag-o-nis'tik), a. and n. [ Their valours are not yet so combatant, Or truly antagonistic , as to fight. B. Jonson , Magnet ick Lady, iii. 4. Those who exercise power and those subject to its exercise, the rulers and the ruled, - stand in antagonistic re lations to each other. Calhoun, Works, I. 12. II. n. Something that acts in an antagonistic manner; specifically, a muscle whose action counteracts that of another. In anatomy those muscles are termed ant agonistics which are opposed to others in their action, as the extensors to the flexors, etc. Brande and Cox.