Contradiction

//ˌkɒntɹəˈdɪkʃən// noun

noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of contradicting. countable, uncountable

    "His contradiction of the proposal was very interesting."

  2. 2
    the speech act of contradicting someone wordnet
  3. 3
    A statement that contradicts itself, i.e., a statement that claims that the same thing is true and that it is false at the same time and in the same senses of the terms. countable

    "There is a contradiction in Clarence Page's statement that a woman should have the right to choose and decide for herself whether to have an abortion and at the same time she should not have that right."

  4. 4
    (logic) a statement that is necessarily false wordnet
  5. 5
    A logical inconsistency among two or more elements or propositions. countable

    "Marx believed that the contradictions of capitalism would lead to socialism."

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  1. 6
    opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas wordnet
  2. 7
    A proposition that is false for all values of its propositional variables or Boolean atoms. countable

Synonyms

All synonyms
abjurationabjurementabnegationabrogationabsolute contradictionalternative fact

Example

More examples

"Our diplomacy and strategy ran in clear contradiction to each other."

Etymology

From Middle English contradiccioun, contradiction, from Old French contradiction, from Latin contrādictiō, from contrādīcō (“speak against”).

Related phrases

contradiction in termslaw of contradictionlaw of non-contradictionnon-contradictionprinciple of contradictionproof by contradictionself-contradictionsign of contradictionself contradiction

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.