Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A state of open, often prolonged fighting; a battle or war.
  • noun A state of disagreement or disharmony between persons or ideas; a clash.
  • noun Psychology An emotional or mental disturbance resulting from the opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, or tendencies.
  • noun Opposition between characters or forces in a work of drama or fiction, especially when motivating or shaping the action of the plot.
  • intransitive verb To be in or come into opposition; differ.
  • intransitive verb Archaic To engage in warfare.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To strike or dash together; meet in opposition; come together violently.
  • To contend; fight; strive; struggle.
  • To be in opposition; be contrary or at variance: as, the evidence given by the second witness conflicted with that given by the first.
  • noun A struggle for mastery; a striving to oppose or overcome; a battle or combat; contention; controversy; strife.
  • noun Discord of action, feeling, or effect; antagonism, as of interests or principles; counteraction, as of causes, laws, or agencies of any kind; opposing action or tendency; opposition; collision: as, a conflict of the elements, or between right and wrong.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A striking or dashing together; violent collision.
  • noun A strife for the mastery; hostile contest; battle; struggle; fighting.
  • noun that branch of jurisprudence which deals with individual litigation claimed to be subject to the conflicting laws of two or more states or nations; -- often used as synonymous with Private international law.
  • intransitive verb To strike or dash together; to meet in violent collision; to collide.
  • intransitive verb To maintain a conflict; to contend; to engage in strife or opposition; to struggle.
  • intransitive verb To be in opposition; to be contradictory.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A clash or disagreement, often violent, between two opposing groups or individuals.
  • noun An incompatibility, as of two things that cannot be simultaneously fulfilled.
  • verb intransitive To be at odds (with); to disagree or be incompatible
  • verb intransitive To overlap (with), as in a schedule.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a hostile meeting of opposing military forces in the course of a war
  • verb be in conflict
  • verb go against, as of rules and laws
  • noun a state of opposition between persons or ideas or interests
  • noun a disagreement or argument about something important
  • noun an open clash between two opposing groups (or individuals)
  • noun opposition between two simultaneous but incompatible feelings
  • noun an incompatibility of dates or events
  • noun opposition in a work of drama or fiction between characters or forces (especially an opposition that motivates the development of the plot)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Latin cōnflīctus, collision, from past participle of cōnflīgere, to strike together : com-, com- + flīgere, to strike.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin conflictus, past participle of confligere ("to strike together"), from com- ("together") (a form of con-) + fligere ("to strike")

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