ideal vs rival

ideal

noun
  • A perfect standard of beauty, intellect etc., or a standard of excellence to aim at. 

  • A subsemigroup with the property that if any semigroup element outside of it is added to any one of its members, the result must lie outside of it. 

  • A subring closed under multiplication by its containing ring. 

  • A non-empty lower set (of a partially ordered set) which is closed under binary suprema (a.k.a. joins). 

  • A collection of sets, considered small or negligible, such that every subset of each member and the union of any two members are also members of the collection. 

  • A Lie subalgebra (subspace that is closed under the Lie bracket) 𝖍 of a given Lie algebra 𝖌 such that the Lie bracket [𝖌,𝖍] is a subset of 𝖍. 

adj
  • Not actually present, but considered as present when limits at infinity are included. 

  • Optimal; being the best possibility. 

  • Existing only in the mind; conceptual, imaginary. 

  • Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea. 

  • Perfect, flawless, having no defects. 

  • Teaching or relating to the doctrine of idealism. 

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 ideal and rival occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )