"combative mode" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It can be used to describe a state or behavior in which someone is ready to fight or argue aggressively. Example: In the midst of a heated debate, John switched into combative mode and began aggressively attacking his opponent's arguments.
In interviews this week he was in his combative mode, challenging Pentagon officials to take lie-detector tests and asserting that commanders had praised him in the past.
But after a wave of protests against his job swap, and the subsequent rigging of December's parliamentary elections, Mr Putin has been forced into a much more combative mode; Russia is under threat, he says, calling on his supporters to mobilise for a final battle against enemies foreign and domestic.The threat to Russia is imaginary; the threat to Mr Putin and his system is real.
Wallinger's nag is not in frisky or combative mood.
Upon the president's return from Hawaii, the Obama campaign this week unleashed a carefully scripted and deliberately aggressive strategy that showed a White House in combative re-election mode as the president and his advisers sought to ensure that the Republicans did not get all the political limelight.
"Onecept," recorded in December, is a vital document, steeped in the combative and sacramental modes of post-1960s free jazz but committed at every turn to the action just at hand, or just ahead.
Rangers Coach John Tortorella began his briefing on the Devils series in his playoff mode — curt, combative, in a rush to get back to his assistants.
He has made a film that, at its frequent best, raises his own celebrity to a political object and transforms that celebrity into a mode of combative yet deeply empathetic practical politics, even turns it into a political weapon of the sort that's seemingly ready-made to combat Trump, whose candidacy, after all, is itself purely a product of the celebrity industry.
Despite starting out on a note of contrition, he couldn't prevent himself from reverting to his usual mode, which is cocky and combative.
But his mood quickly turned combative.
There was a dynamic, combative quality to most of his conversation (mischievous wind-up was a favourite mode and, though he did not drink alcohol, he occasionally dipped his barbs in curare) but when the subject was mining and miners, a tone of wistful reverie invaded his voice.
Its style, far from being earnest, is proudly combative.
