Meanings
comparative more aggressive · superlative most aggressive
- Characterized by aggression; highly combative; prone to behave in a way that involves attacking (especially if unjustly) or arguing.
an aggressive policy, war, person, nation
2 more examples
When a new aggressive fish is added to an aquarium with an already-established, territorial fish, the established fish will probably fight to protect its territory (the whole tank).
2011, Judith S. Weis, Do Fish Sleep, Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 63This highly-aggressive approach had results, but briefly caused a major uproar in parts of the United States, which was mitigated by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty in 1842, which formalised the U.S. Navy's contribution to the antislavery efforts.
2018 December 1, Drachinifel, 8:56 from the start, in Anti-Slavery Patrols - The West Africa Squadron, archived from the original on 29 Nov 2024Synonyms: bare-knuckle
- video gamesTends to attack the player while unprovoked.
Zombies are aggressive once you are near them.
Synonyms: bare-knuckle
- especiallycomputingExploiting every opportunity to be applied.
This paper describes how aggressive loop unrolling is done in a retargetable optimizing compiler.
1996, Tibor Gyimothy, Compiler Construction: 6th International Conference, CC '96, Linköping, Sweden, April 24 - 26, 1996. Proceedings, Volume 6, Springer, →ISBN, page 595 more examples
Since the most aggressive type of optimization a program can be subjected to is parallelization, understanding a program before attempting to parallelize it is a very important step.
2001, Paul Feautrier, edited by Santosh Pande and Dharma P. Agrawal, Compiler Optimizations for Scalable Parallel Systems, Springer, →ISBN, page 173However, aggressive compiler techniques such as loop unrolling, promoting of subscripted array variables into registers (especially in of subscripted array variables into registers (especially in loops) and interprocedural optimizations create heavy register pressure and it is still quite important to do a good job of register allocation.
2002, Y. N. Srikant, Priti Shankar, The Compiler Design Handbook: Optimizations and Machine Code Generation, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 465The Itanium processor is an example of an Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) architecture and thus relies on aggressive and expensive compiler optimizations for performance.
2002, Shpeisman, T. ; Lueh, G.-Y. ; Adl-Tabatabai, A.-R., PACT 2002: 2002 International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques : proceedings : 22-25 September, 2002, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press →ISBN, page 249This sensibly eases the programmer task and allows for more aggressive optimisations of the global program structure.
2003, Susanna Pelagatti, edited by Fethi Rabhi and Sergei Gorlatch, Patterns and Skeletons for Parallel and Distributed Computing, Springer, →ISBN, page 182The CUDA C code for the GPU, as well as the C and inline assembly code for the CPU, were highly optimized and aggressive compiler optimizations (-O4) were turned on.
2011, Wen-mei W. Hwu, GPU Computing Gems Jade Edition, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 11
plural aggressives
- One who is aggressive.
- USBlack lesbian slangA (Black) woman who presents as masculine; a butch.
[...]; usually the femme is the ho [at the costume party], and the butch/aggressive is the pimp. [...] An aggressive is a masculine-identified woman like the category of butch; aggressive is the contemporary term among younger masculine-identified women.
2012 February 1, Siobhan Brooks, Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry, State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 110
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveCharacterized by aggression; highly combative; prone to behave in a way that involves attacking (especially if unjustly) or arguing.
adjectiveTends to attack the player while unprovoked.
More synonyms by meaning
adjectivehaving or showing determination and energetic pursuit of your ends
adjectivetending to spread quickly
adjectivecharacteristic of an enemy or one eager to fight
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*h₂éd
- Proto-Italic*ad
- Proto-Italic*ad-
- Latinad-
- Proto-Indo-European*gʰredʰ-
- Latingradior
- Latinaggredior
- Latinaggressu
- Englishaggress
- Englishaggressive
From aggress + -ive. Compare with French agressif.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Afrikaans aggressief
- aggressieftending or disposed to aggress
Ancient Greek ἐπιθετικός
- ἐπιθετικός (epithetikós)tending or disposed to aggress
Arabic عُدْوَانِيّ, هُجُومِيّ
- عُدْوَانِيّ (ʕudwāniyy)tending or disposed to aggress
- هُجُومِيّ (hujūmiyy)tending or disposed to aggress
Bulgarian агреси́вен, напада́телен
- агреси́вен (agresíven)tending or disposed to aggress
- напада́телен (napadátelen)tending or disposed to aggress
Catalan agressiu
- agressiutending or disposed to aggress
Chinese Mandarin 好鬥 /好斗, 好戰的 /好战的
- 好鬥 /好斗 (hàodòu)tending or disposed to aggress
- 好戰的 /好战的 (hàozhàn de)tending or disposed to aggress
- 侵略的 (qīnlüè de)tending or disposed to aggress
- 愛尋釁的 /爱寻衅的 (ài xúnxìn de)tending or disposed to aggress
Czech útočný, agresivní
- útočnýtending or disposed to aggress
- agresivnítending or disposed to aggress
Danish aggressiv
- aggressivtending or disposed to aggress
Dutch agressief
- agressieftending or disposed to aggress
Esperanto agresema
- agresematending or disposed to aggress
Estonian kallaletungiv
- kallaletungivtending or disposed to aggress
Finnish aggressiivinen, hyökkäävä
- aggressiivinentending or disposed to aggress
- hyökkäävätending or disposed to aggress
French agressif
- agressiftending or disposed to aggress
German aggressiv, angriffslustig
- aggressivtending or disposed to aggress
- angriffslustigtending or disposed to aggress
Greek επιθετικός
- επιθετικός (epithetikós)tending or disposed to aggress
Hebrew מתגרה
- מתגרהtending or disposed to aggress
Hindi आक्रमणकारक, जंगी
- आक्रमणकारक (ākramaṇkārak)tending or disposed to aggress
- जंगी (jaṅgī)tending or disposed to aggress
- धक्कामार (dhakkāmār)tending or disposed to aggress
- दंगली (daṅglī)tending or disposed to aggress
- आक्रामक (ākrāmak)tending or disposed to aggress
Hungarian agresszív
- agresszívtending or disposed to aggress
Icelandic árásargjarn, aggressífur
- árásargjarntending or disposed to aggress
- aggressífurtending or disposed to aggress
Indonesian agresif
- agresiftending or disposed to aggress
Irish ionsaitheach, amasach
- ionsaitheachtending or disposed to aggress
- amasachtending or disposed to aggress
Italian aggressivo
- aggressivotending or disposed to aggress
Japanese 侵略的な, 攻撃的な
- 侵略的な (shinryakuteki na)tending or disposed to aggress
- 攻撃的な (kōgekiteki na)tending or disposed to aggress
Korean 공격적인, 침략적인
- 공격적인 (gonggyeokjeog-in)tending or disposed to aggress
- 침략적인 (chimnyakjeog-in)tending or disposed to aggress
Latin pugnax, aggressivus
- pugnaxtending or disposed to aggress
- aggressivustending or disposed to aggress
Latvian agresīvs
- agresīvstending or disposed to aggress
Lithuanian agresyvus
- agresyvustending or disposed to aggress
Malay agresif
- agresiftending or disposed to aggress
Māori rīrā, whakaariki
- rīrāSpreading rapidly of a disease or tumour
- whakaarikitending or disposed to aggress
- kairiritending or disposed to aggress
Norwegian aggressiv
- aggressivtending or disposed to aggress
Persian ستیزجو
- ستیزجو (setizju)tending or disposed to aggress
Polish agresywny, wojowniczy
- agresywnytending or disposed to aggress
- wojowniczytending or disposed to aggress
- napastliwytending or disposed to aggress
Portuguese agressivo
- agressivotending or disposed to aggress
Romanian agresiv
- agresivtending or disposed to aggress
Russian агресси́вный, вои́нственный
- агресси́вный (agressívnyj)tending or disposed to aggress
- вои́нственный (voínstvennyj)tending or disposed to aggress
Scottish Gaelic ionnsaigheach
- ionnsaigheachtending or disposed to aggress
Slovak agresívny, útočný
- agresívnytending or disposed to aggress
- útočnýtending or disposed to aggress
Spanish agresivo
- agresivotending or disposed to aggress
Swedish aggressiv
- aggressivtending or disposed to aggress
Tagalog mabalagsik
- mabalagsiktending or disposed to aggress
Thai ก้าวร้าว, ออกตัวแรง
- ก้าวร้าว (gâao ráao)tending or disposed to aggress
- ออกตัวแรงtending or disposed to aggress
Turkish saldırgan, agresif
- saldırgantending or disposed to aggress
- agresiftending or disposed to aggress
Ukrainian агреси́вний, войовни́чий
- агреси́вний (ahresývnyj)tending or disposed to aggress
- войовни́чий (vojovnýčyj)tending or disposed to aggress
- войови́тий (vojovýtyj)tending or disposed to aggress
Vietnamese xâm lược
- xâm lượctending or disposed to aggress
Welsh gormesol
- gormesoltending or disposed to aggress
Yiddish אַגרעסיוו
- אַגרעסיוו (agresiv)tending or disposed to aggress
Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with aggressive
Cite this entry
aggressive. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/aggressive
“aggressive.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/aggressive. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “aggressive,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/aggressive.
Source: aggressive on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.