1 ~ (to sb) rude in a way that causes you to feel upset, insulted or annoyed:
offensive behaviour / remarks * His comments were deeply offensive to a large number of single mothers. * The programme contains language which some viewers may find offensive.
OPPINOFFENSIVE
2 (formal) extremely unpleasant:
an offensive smell
3 [onlybeforenoun] connected with the act of attacking sb/sth:
an offensive war * offensive action * He was charged with carrying an offensive weapon.
compareDEFENSIVE
4 (AmE, sport) connected with the team that has control of the ball; connected with the act of scoring points:
offensive play
compareDEFENSIVE
offensively adverb:
He later apologized for speaking offensively about the Queen. * (AmE) The team needs to be encouraged to play more offensively.
offensiveness noun [U]
Part of speech: noun
1 a military operation in which large numbers of soldiers, etc. attack another country:
an air / a bombing offensive * The final offensive was launched on January 10.
2 a series of actions aimed at achieving sth in a way that attracts a lot of attention:
The government has launched a new offensive against crime. * a sales offensive * The public seems unconvinced by their latest charm offensive (= their attempt to make people like them).
IDIOMS
be on the offensive to be attacking sb/sth rather than waiting for them to attack you:
The Scots were on the offensive for most of the game. * The government is very much on the offensive in the fight against drugs.
go on (to) the offensive
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of offensive come from?
This entry for offensive is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is offensive a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, offensive is tagged as adjective.
Does offensive appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — offensive appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
