【Aggressive】 , 【Militant】 , 【Assertive】 , 【Self-assertive】 , 【Pushing】 and 【Pushy】 are here compared as applied to persons, their dispositions, or their behavior, and as meaning conspicuously or obtrusively active or energetic.

【Aggressive】 implies a disposition to assume or maintain leadership or domination, sometimes by bullying, sometimes by indifference to others’ rights, but more often by self-confident and forceful prosecution of one’s ends.

• as intolerant and 【aggressive】 as any of the traditional satirists
  —Day Lewis’
• protect themselves against a too 【aggressive】 prosecution of the women’s business
  —Shaw

【Militant】 , like 【aggressive】 , implies a fighting disposition but seldom conveys a suggestion of self-seeking. It usually implies extreme devotion to some cause, movement, or institution and energetic and often self-sacrificing prosecution of its ends.

• 【militant】 feminists
• 【militant】 trade union
• the cause of reform slowly went on gaining adherents—most of them . . . of the acquiescent rather than the 【militant】 type
  —Grandgent

【Assertive】 stresses self-confidence and boldness in action or, especially, in the expression of one’s opinions. It often implies a determined attempt to make oneself or one’s influence felt.

• somewhat too diffident, not 【assertive】 enough
  —Bennett
• to say, with some challenging 【assertive】 people, that trees are more beautiful than flowers
  —Lucas

Selfassertive usually adds to 【assertive】 the implication of bumptiousness or undue forwardness.

• 【self-assertive】 behavior incompatible with cooperativeness

【Pushing】 , when used without any intent to depreciate, comes very close to 【aggressive】 in the current sense of the latter; however, the word is more commonly derogatory and implies, variously, officiousness, social climbing, or offensive intrusiveness.

• an energetic, 【pushing】 youth, already intent on getting on in the world
  — Anderson

【Pushy】 is very close in meaning to 【pushing】 but is more consistently derogatory in connotation.

• his motive power derives from . . . the pushiest ambition since Alexander the Great
  —R. L. Taylor
• careful not to sound 【pushy】 or overeager
  —McClung