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Agon and Greek History
Agon comes from the Greek word agōn, which is translated with a number of meanings, among them "contest," "competition at games," and "gathering." In ancient Greece, agons (the word is also pluralized in English as agones) were contests held during public festivals. The contests—among them the ancient Olympics, on which our modern Olympics is modeled—involved everything from athletics to chariot and horse racing to music and literature. Agon in the realm of literature refers to the dramatic conflict between the main characters in a Greek play or, more broadly, between the chief characters in any literary work. The word is also occasionally used to refer to conflict in general.
Examples of agon in a Sentence
Elisa Gonzalez, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2025
The Greeks called their games agones, or struggles.
—Louisa Thomas, The New Yorker, 21 July 2024
Ferrara aligns Forgione’s agon with the self-conscious struggles of modern agnostics — Pio’s mysticism is interpreted by actor-activist Shia LaBeouf in terms of secular anguish, familiar from Ferrara’s American-set exploitation/art movies The Funeral, Bad Lieutenant, and The King of New York.
—Armond White, National Review, 2 June 2023
For Brown, the project proves an antidote to, or refuge from, the roiling agon of our times.
—Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 4 May 2023
The tale itself highlights Greene’s prescient moral insight for the War on Terror: in situations of limited agency, description is the foundational moral agon.
—Matthew Carey Salyer, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2021
His grand vision here drops a few narrative strands: Batman’s troubled conscience and Superman’s resurrection and reunion with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) get neglected in exchange for closer examination of Aquaman’s origin and Cyborg’s agon.
—Armond White, National Review, 19 Mar. 2021
Each competitor in the agon is expected to stake his or her claims on truth; Nietzsche advanced his own opinions with utmost vehemence.
—Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2019
Cite this Entry
“Agon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agon. Accessed 23 Jul. 2025.
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