Aggressive, Militant, Assertive, Self-assertive, Pushing and Pushy are here compared as applied to persons, their dispositions, or their behavior, and as meaning conspicuously or obtrusively active or energetic.
Aggressive implies a disposition to assume or maintain leadership or domination, sometimes by bullying, sometimes by indifference to others’ rights, but more often by self-confident and forceful prosecution of one’s ends.
- as intolerant and aggressive as any of the traditional satirists
—Day Lewis’ - protect themselves against a too aggressive prosecution of the women’s business
—Shaw
Militant, like aggressive, implies a fighting disposition but seldom conveys a suggestion of self-seeking. It usually implies extreme devotion to some cause, movement, or institution and energetic and often self-sacrificing prosecution of its ends.
- militant feminists
- militant trade union
- the cause of reform slowly went on gaining adherents—most of them . . . of the acquiescent rather than the militant type
—Grandgent
Assertive stresses self-confidence and boldness in action or, especially, in the expression of one’s opinions. It often implies a determined attempt to make oneself or one’s influence felt.
- somewhat too diffident, not assertive enough
—Bennett - to say, with some challenging assertive people, that trees are more beautiful than flowers
—Lucas
Selfassertive usually adds to assertive the implication of bumptiousness or undue forwardness.
- self-assertive behavior incompatible with cooperativeness
Pushing, when used without any intent to depreciate, comes very close to aggressive in the current sense of the latter; however, the word is more commonly derogatory and implies, variously, officiousness, social climbing, or offensive intrusiveness.
- an energetic, pushing youth, already intent on getting on in the world
— Anderson
Pushy is very close in meaning to pushing but is more consistently derogatory in connotation.
- his motive power derives from . . . the pushiest ambition since Alexander the Great
—R. L. Taylor - careful not to sound pushy or overeager
—McClung