Meaning & use
healthy competition
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountable
Rivalry between people or groups that makes them try harder and improve, without unfair behavior or lasting damage.
Grammar: No article and no plural: we talk about healthy competition in general, not 'a healthy competition'.
Patterns
- healthy competition between A and B
- healthy competition for something
- healthy competition among someone
- create healthy competition
The teacher pairs students up because healthy competition between classmates keeps everyone working harder.
Small shops on the same street often enjoy healthy competition, each one trying to offer better service than the next.
There is healthy competition for the few places on the team, and the players train more seriously because of it.
noununcountablebusiness
A situation in business or sport where several sides compete strongly but follow the rules and treat each other fairly.
Grammar: Used after verbs like encourage, promote, and foster: encourage healthy competition.
Patterns
- encourage healthy competition
- promote healthy competition
- healthy competition in the market
- healthy competition drives something
The new rules were designed to encourage healthy competition in the airline market.
Coaches say the league works best when there is healthy competition and nobody tries to cheat.
Healthy competition drives prices down, which is good for customers.
Common combinations
- healthy competition between
- Healthy competition between the two departments led to better products.
- healthy competition for
- There is healthy competition for the top prize every year.
- encourage healthy competition
- Managers try to encourage healthy competition without creating bad feeling.
- a bit of healthy competition
- A bit of healthy competition can make a dull job more fun.
- healthy competition among
- Healthy competition among the students raised the standard of the essays.
Synonyms and how they differ
- rivalry
- Rivalry is stronger and more neutral, and it can easily turn unfriendly, while healthy competition suggests the rivalry stays positive.
- competitiveness
- Competitiveness describes the quality of wanting to win, often about a person's character, not a shared situation between groups.
- contest
- A contest is one particular event with rules and a winner, not the ongoing pressure to improve that healthy competition describes.
Opposites
Word family
- compete verb
- to take part in a contest or try to do better than others
- competitor noun
- a person or company that competes with another
- competitive adjective
- wanting very much to win, or involving competition
- competitively adverb
- in a way that involves trying to beat others
Commonly confused: healthy competition or competition?
healthy competition vs competition
Competition on its own simply means the activity of competing or an event; add 'healthy' only when you mean the rivalry is fair and useful.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'healthy competition' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Healthy competition' is uncountable, so it takes no article and no plural, as in option 1. Option 0 wrongly adds 'a', option 2 treats it as a thing you can buy, and option 3 uses a comparative form that does not exist.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “healthy competition”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.