agon

1. (countable) A struggle or contest; conflict; especially between the protagonist and antagonist in a literary work.Examples: "It was not ecological pressure or shortages of protein, as anthropologist Marvin Harris has claimed; institutionalized violence, as opposed to the stylized agons of hunters over grievances, was the shadow side of the Neolithic Revolution."; "One way of reading Beowulf is to think of it as three agons in the hero's life[.]"; "The other ethical system is that of agon. Agon is a battlefield. We enter agon not to exchange, but to fight. We dream of winning but are also prepared to lose – including to lose ourselves, even in the literal sense of dying for a great cause."countable

2. (countable) An intellectual conflict or apparent competition of ideas.Examples: "Freud's originality stemmed from his aggression and ambition in his agon with biology."; "The point, though, is that to fully and uncritically surrender to such agon against individuals is to invite one's own ethical degeneration; […]"countable

3. (countable) A contest in ancient Greece, as in athletics or music, in which prizes were awarded.countable

4. (uncountable) A two-player board game played on a hexagonally-tiled board, popular in Victorian times.Synonyms: queen's guarduncountable