oppugn

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

From Middle French oppugner Latin oppugno (“fight against, to attack, assail, assault, storm, besiege, war with”).

But in promiscuous company no prudent man will oppugn the merits of a contemporary in his own supposed department; contenting himself with praising in his turn those whom he deems excellent. — Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Errors in religion were too tremendous to be tolerated for a moment, and the form (or rather anti-form) of worship handed down by her fathers, had cost too much blood and crime to be oppugned. — Western Characters; or, Types of Border Life in the Western States, John Ludlum McConnel
It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in Slawkenbergius, that I say nothing likewise of Scroderus (Andrea) who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn Prignitz with great violence—proving it in his own way, first logically, and then by a series of stubborn facts, “That so far was Prignitz from the truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the nose begat the fancy.” —The learned suspected Scroderus of an indecent sophism in this—and Prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute, that Scroderus had shifted the idea upon him——but Scroderus went on, maintaining his thesis. — The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, Laurence Sterne

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