jostle

To bump into or brush against while in motion; to push aside.

Besides, various are the paths to power and fame which by accident or choice men pursue, and though they jostle against each other, for men of the same profession are seldom friends, yet there is a much greater number of their fellow-creatures with whom they never clash. But women are very differently situated with respect to each other—for they are all rivals.

It is not that there are several systems of movement, physical, intellectual, and moral, which are perpetually jostling each other, or which clash whenever they come in contact, and which move on by the one vanquishing the other. But, on the contrary, each of these economies takes its uninterrupted course, as if there were no other moving within the same space […]

To move through by pushing and shoving.

Axia and Amory, acquaintances of an hour, jostled behind a waiter to a table at a point of vantage; there they took seats and watched.

Allow the person in front of you sufficient space to turn around from the bar with their drinks. Do not jostle past them.

To be close to or in physical contact with.

[…] the advantages of diversification of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders.

To contend or vie in order to acquire something.

Dick, who, in serious earnest, was supposed to have considerable natural talents for his profession, and whose vain and sanguine disposition never permitted him to doubt for a moment of ultimate success, threw himself headlong into the crowd which jostled and struggled for notice and preferment.

1917, Rudyard Kipling, “The Children,” poem accompanying the story “The Honours of War” in A Diversity of Creatures, London: Macmillan, pp. 129-130, […] Our statecraft, our learning Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour.

To pick or attempt to pick pockets.

The act of jostling someone or something; push, shove.

1722, Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, London: J. Cooke, 1765, p. 241, I had full hold of her Watch, but giving a great Jostle, as if somebody had thrust me against her, and in the Juncture giving the Watch a fair pull, I found it would not come, so I let it go that Moment, and cried out as if I had been killed, that somebody had trod upon my Foot […]

The action of a jostling crowd.

1865, Harriet Beecher Stowe (under the pseudonym Christopher Crowfield), The Chimney-Corner, Boston: Ticknor & Field, 1868, Chapter 12, p. 291, For years to come, the average of lone women will be largely increased; and the demand, always great, for some means by which they many provide for themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become more urgent and imperative.