hypercompetitive

adjective

hy·​per·​com·​pet·​i·​tive ˌhī-pər-kəm-ˈpe-tə-tiv 

variants or hyper-competitive

: extremely or excessively competitive

hypercompetitive athletes

learning to adapt quickly in a hypercompetitive industry

… eliminates customers' deep fear that their siblings, neighbors or hyper-competitive co-workers might score sweeter deals on the same vehicles.

—James Bennet

hypercompetitiveness noun

or hyper-competitiveness

The latest work offers a counterpoint to the familiar face of nature, that of animal brutality, hypercompetitiveness, selfishness and deceit.

—Natalie Angier

Examples of hypercompetitive in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Sadly, this hypercompetitive society has had the OECD’s highest suicide rate since 2003, and suicide is the number one cause of death among South Koreans aged 10 to 39. —Katharine H.s. Moon, Foreign Affairs, 1 Dec. 2016

Medical paternalism has a justifiable role in sports, both to maintain public health and to prevent hypercompetitive athletes from really harming themselves. —Arthur L. Caplan, STAT, 9 Aug. 2024

In this hypercompetitive new era, runners are taking on unprecedented training loads to keep pace, which explains how a rare condition like OTS began showing up so frequently in the sport’s top ranks. —Meaghen Brown, Outside Online, 12 June 2015

For the most part, the new middle class seems too preoccupied with the intense pressures of owning a home and raising a child in a hypercompetitive society to get involved in politics. —John Osburg, Foreign Affairs, 18 Aug. 2014

Word History

First Known Use

1914, in the meaning defined above