contrarian vs rival

contrarian

noun
  • A person who likes or tends to express a contradicting viewpoint, especially one who denounces the majority persuasion. 

  • A financial investor who tends to have an opinion of market trends at variance with most others. 

adj
  • Pertaining to or characteristic of a contrarian. 

rival

noun
  • Someone or something with similar claims of quality or distinction as another. 

  • A competitor (person, team, company, etc.) with the same goal as another, or striving to attain the same thing. Defeating a rival may be a primary or necessary goal of a competitor. 

adj
  • Having the same pretensions or claims; standing in competition for superiority. 

verb
  • To be equal to, or match, or to surpass another. 

  • To oppose or compete with. 

  • To strive to equal or excel; to emulate. 

How often have the words contrarian and rival occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )