aggressive

Pluralaggressives

1. 1
   adjective

   Behaving in a combative, attacking way; prone to fight or argue, often unfairly.

   Her aggressive driving frightened the other passengers.

   The negotiator's aggressive tone made the whole meeting tense.

   Similarhostile, combative, belligerent, confrontational, pugnacious

   Oppositegentle, peaceful, passive, mild

   Note

   The core sense, and the one the others are built on: aggress plus the adjective-forming -ive, with French agressif as a close parallel. It stretches from people to policies, wars and nations, and even to a territorial fish in a crowded aquarium. Its edge is moral, attacking and often unjustly so. That edge disappears in the programming sense and the investor's sense.

2. 2
   adjective

   Spreading quickly or extensively, as a virulent infection or malignant tumor does.

   The tumor proved aggressive, doubling in size within a few weeks.

   Patients with aggressive lymphomas often need immediate chemotherapy.

   Similarinvasive, virulent, fast-growing

   Oppositeindolent

   Note

   Pathology borrows the word for diseases and tumors that behave like attackers, spreading fast and wide. It is clinical shorthand for virulent or malignant behavior, so calling a lymphoma aggressive signals that treatment cannot wait and the outlook is poorer. The usual opposite in clinical writing is indolent, which describes a disease that grows slowly.

3. 3
   adjective

   Involving high risk taken in pursuit of a potentially high reward.

   The fund manager favored an aggressive strategy heavy in tech stocks.

   Their aggressive expansion relied on borrowing very large sums.

   Similarbold, risky, ambitious, daring

   Oppositeconservative, cautious

   Note

   Finance applies the word to the investment itself, not only to the investor: an aggressive stock, an aggressive portfolio. What it measures is appetite for risk, accepted for the chance of above-average returns, and it is typical of growth-oriented portfolios. Nothing combative is implied. An aggressive fund is simply one expected to swing harder in both directions.

4. 4
   adjective

   Applied at every available opportunity; used as fully and as often as possible.

   The compiler performs aggressive inlining to reduce function-call overhead.

   Aggressive caching keeps as much data in memory as it can.

   Oppositeconservative

   Note

   A compiler writer's word with no hostility in it: an aggressive optimization is one applied wherever it possibly can be. It pairs with the techniques themselves, as in aggressive inlining, loop unrolling and caching. It grades freely, so parallelization can be called the most aggressive optimization of all. It often implies a trade-off, since an architecture that relies on aggressive optimizations relies on expensive ones too.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A person who behaves in a combative, attacking manner toward others.

   He was the office aggressive, always ready to provoke a confrontation.

   The two aggressives clashed before the referee finally intervened.

   Similaraggressor, bully

6. 6
   nounUScountable

   A woman, especially a Black woman, who has a masculine gender presentation; a butch.

   At the ball, several aggressives walked in crisp menswear.

   She has identified as an aggressive since college.

   Similarstud, butch

   Oppositefemme

   Note

   The noun names the person, and its plural is aggressives. Siobhan Brooks's Unequal Desires (2012) describes an aggressive as a masculine-identified woman like the category of butch. Brooks calls aggressive the contemporary term among younger masculine-identified women and pairs it against femme, writing butch/aggressive. The community background is the same as for the adjective.

7. 7
   adjectiveUS

   Of a woman, having a masculine or butch gender presentation.

   Her aggressive presentation included a fade and a tailored suit.

   She described her aggressive identity with quiet pride.

   Similarbutch, masculine

   Oppositefemme

   Note

   A term from US Black lesbian slang, the community's counterpart to butch. As an adjective it describes presentation, such as dress, haircut and manner, and it works as a self-identifying label. It therefore carries pride rather than the hostility of the combative meaning. Outside the community, use it with care and only where the identity reading is unmistakable.

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