Definition

Confrontation is a situation in which people or groups with opposing viewpoints or goals come face-to-face and engage in conflict or disagreement.

Pronunciation

US English

UK English


See Synonyms, Antonyms and Usage

Excerpts from News Articles

"This is the first ruling in which a judge has confronted the moral and legal question of torture head-on," said James Connell, lead attorney for Guantánamo prisoner Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the five Sept. 11 defendants. "The military commission has dodged the issue of torture for so many years. The fact that somebody took it head-on is going to be an important precedent for the other cases."

Logo 2020-06-05 NPR

“We will carry out an almost total disarmament of Serbia,” he said in an address to the country. “We must make a decision to confront this evil.” Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Logo 2021-03-23 The Washington Post

But were you to turn your back on such an elegant view for just a moment, you may be confronted with an attractive but seemingly arbitrary piece of architecture, a segment of wall, only slightly larger than the entrance itself.

Logo 2021-11-01 China Daily

Lia Pripstein was born in the Soviet Union and raised in Israel. Her English-language works have been published in JewishFiction.net, Bacopa Literary Review and forthcoming in New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust. She has recently completed an upmarket political thriller set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Logo 2021-11-28 NPR

With millions of people needing an effective treatment, why are researchers still fumbling in this quest for a cure for what is arguably one of the most important diseases confronting humankind?

Logo 2022-09-19 The Conversation

Many of the women who pursued careers in music during the turbulent 20th century led extraordinarily complex and exciting lives. As well as confronting the stereotypes that women artists have long faced, they often lived and worked in the midst of war. Despite their accomplishments, their names are not always known by the general public. Romanian pianist Clara Haskil is one of them.

Logo 2022-11-30 The Conversation

I still can’t get over the 2020 death of David Graeber, who is exactly the kind of aggressively elastic thinker we need to confront these omnivorously bleak times. Best described as an anarchist anthropologist, if one was forced to simplify Graeber’s worldview it’s that people make the world they live in: we make choices about justice and injustice, fairness and iniquity, and we make them together.

Logo 2023-01-12 Literary Hub

The friend also shared screenshots of a text message conversation that took place between Callaghan and Caroline Elise in December 2021, after Caroline Elise had confronted Callaghan about his behavior.

Logo 2023-01-20 NPR

Nichols was 29. Earlier in the day, law enforcement officials showed his family video of the January 7 traffic stop when officers pulled Nichols over for reckless driving. He was taken to the hospital after what officers initially reported as a foot chase and two confrontations . He died three days later, although no cause of death has been released. The Memphis Police Department has dismissed five officers implicated in the incident. Violations include excessive use of force and failure to intervene and render aid. All of the officers are Black, which civil rights attorney Ben Crump said is immaterial.

Logo 2023-01-24 NPR

"This extremely dangerous decision takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation ," said Nechayev.

Logo 2023-01-25 NPR

"When it comes to baritones, the composers looked for a kind of kinship with the tenor, sometimes as an evil double," said Jules Cavalié, editor-in-chief at L’Avant-Scène Opéra. "In baritone roles, we can find the theatrical qualities of heroism and of valour. They are proud characters who want to defend their honour, who often want to confront the tenor."

Logo 2023-01-26 EURO News

The historical events that unfolded at a transit camp for African servicemen (tirailleurs) near Dakar, Senegal in 1944 are dramatised in this film. These soldiers had fought for France in the second world war but, on returning to Africa to await their demobilisation, are confronted with poor living conditions – their severance pay being first delayed and then drastically cut. This leads to a revolt against the French authorities which has bloody consequences. Here, Sembène offers a subtext of pan-African solidarity in response to fascist atrocities, colonial injustice, and universal violations of human rights.

Logo 2023-01-31 The Conversation

He’s not stoic. He’s righteously confrontational .

Logo 2023-02-03 MSNBC News

After a long conversation that involved tequila, Kilmer and Timmons decided to confront the fracture directly. Because the only way out of difficult conflict is through. On March 20, 2021, the committee members met for a confidential conversation (on Zoom because of the pandemic) about what they’d experienced on Jan. 6 and how it was affecting their ability to work together.

Logo 2023-02-09 The Washington Post

"When I was editing by myself, I was not hard on myself in that interview," he recalled. "I was not hard on my mom or me. I didn't allow myself to see that I was actually confronting my mom until this really brilliant editor, Josh Altman, came in and allowed me to see it."

Logo 2023-02-21 NPR

His choice of city, though, has drawn attention from experts on extremism. Trump’s event will be held in Waco, amid the 30-year anniversary of the infamous Waco tragedy, a confrontation between the Branch Davidians and federal law enforcement that led to significant loss of life. Around 80 members of the religious community and four federal agents lost their lives in the weekslong siege.

Logo 2023-02-28 The Conversation

"The goal is to support ultimately the prosecutor general in his efforts to do effective investigations to international standards, to put together dossiers on responsible individuals and ultimately to bring criminal cases in domestic courts," she added. "Whenever Russia has troops withdraw or troops retreat, journalists, human rights advocates, investigators, NGO workers are able to get into those areas and they are confronted by this potential evidence of serious atrocities," Van Schaack said, referencing a pattern seen in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Izium, Kherson, Kharkiv, and other cities and towns where Russian troops were deployed. A U.

Logo 2023-03-02 CNBC

"The NSA and FBI will now disrupt and degrade the forums and the C2 of the cybercrime cartels," he said. "This will force the adversary to play defense for once. Through SIGINT and proportionate cyber attacks, Russia and Chinese cyber spies will be confronted . A reckoning has begun."

Logo 2023-03-03 The Register

That flight attendant confronted Torres, who allegedly asked if there were cameras that could confirm the allegations. Shortly after, Torres allegedly approached two flight attendants who were standing near the side door and lunged at one of them, hitting them on the neck with a broken metal spoon three times, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Logo 2023-03-07 NPR

"If the U.S. does not hit the brake but continue to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing and there will surely be conflict and confrontation ," Qin said.

Logo 2023-03-07 CNBC

Decades of studies have shown that female politicians are on average different from their male counterparts. Women tend to care more about women’s issues and support policy agendas which are more inclusive. They are less corrupt and less confrontational .

Logo 2023-03-07 The Conversation

In yet another tweet, Musk wrote: “He has a prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy. The reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout. From what I’ve been told, he’s done almost no work for the past four months, middle-management or otherwise.

Logo 2023-03-08 The Independent

Tunisia is behaving like many other countries confronted by social, political and economic challenges. Public opinion needs radical positions regardless of their responsiveness to the malaise of a society.

Logo 2023-03-08 The Conversation

Last year, the winners were overshadowed by a confrontation with best actor nominee Will Smith, who strode onstage and smacked presenter Chris Rock after he had made a joke about Smith's wife's hair.

Logo 2023-03-09 NPR

One of the consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine is the fact that the Kremlin has lost a lot of its influence in former Soviet countries. This creates opportunities to limit Moscow’s ability to leverage its once dominant role to further its war aims. However, it also means that Russia is likely to raise the stakes and try to escalate tensions and confrontation across the region.

Logo 2023-03-13 The Conversation

Austin delivered his message in a phone call with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu a day after two Russian fighter jets confronted a U.S. drone over the Black Sea, off the southern coast of Ukraine.

Logo 2023-03-14 NPR

Wall Street mounted a relief rally Tuesday, following three straight sessions dominated by the woes of now-collapsed Silicon Valley Bank. Confronted with the ensuing spike in market volatility, we sought to be discerning with our Club portfolio and, eventually, opportunistic in stocks that we felt unreasonably sank. The S & P 500 climbed roughly 1% in afternoon Tuesday trading, clawing back only some of its 3.

Logo 2023-03-14 CNBC

The economy’s vulnerabilities go well beyond those that have been brought into sharp focus by the Russian invasion a year ago. Germany has also been too slow in decarbonising and digitising its economy and in confronting its demographic problems and the acute shortage of skilled workers that affects especially the midsized companies of the Mittelstand.

Logo 2023-03-15 The Economist

For a few years, researchers have been studying how to get adults in the West to accept insects, but few children. So we confronted children with edible insects to study their reactions.

Logo 2023-03-16 The Conversation

But beyond such acts of brinkmanship connected to the war in Ukraine, the Black Sea confrontation highlights just how easily these military interactions might lead to war breaking out “accidentally”.

Logo 2023-03-17 The Conversation

The media spectacle surrounding Musk’s takeover, along with his very vocal views on free speech, likely also encouraged exactly those people to join or rejoin the platform who had fallen foul of its previous attempts to confront hate. Our research gives some backing to this theory. Some 3,855 accounts we identified as posting at least one plausibly antisemitic tweet joined Twitter in the 10 days after Musk took over. This is, however, only a small proportion of the 146,516 accounts that sent at least one antisemitic tweet over the course of the entire study.

Logo 2023-03-20 The Conversation

China's new foreign minister, Qin Gang, later echoed Xi's remarks, warning that " confrontation and conflict" between the world's two largest economies was inevitable unless Washington eased its policies.

Logo 2023-03-20 CNBC

In 2018, she was spoken to by UK police for making videos criticising the chief executive of transgender charity Mermaids. And, in 2019, Keen-Minshull recorded herself in Washington DC confronting trans advocate Sarah McBride after breaking into a private meeting.

Logo 2023-03-21 The Conversation

Some groups are not only confronting Israeli forces but also infiltrating Israeli intelligence. This investigation by Tamer Almisshal sheds light on the Palestinian paramilitary response in the occupied West Bank to the new far-right Israeli government, in the latest development in this decades-long conflict.

Logo 2023-03-22 Al Jazeera

China appeared to be making progress in February, when it was announced that Erkin Tuniyaz, the governor of Xinjiang, would meet officials in London and Brussels. But that trip was called off after activists and politicians called for Mr Tuniyaz to be detained on his arrival in London. Around the same time a long-delayed dialogue on human rights between China and the EU resumed. European officials say these meetings give them a chance to confront their Chinese counterparts. Activists say they impose no real costs on China, while giving leaders on both sides cover to strengthen business ties.

Logo 2023-03-23 The Economist