Contravene

verb

verb ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To act contrary to an order; to fail to conform to a regulation or obligation. transitive

    "[…] nothing is a commandement, or a commanded dutie but that which if we contravene, it maketh us guilty of sin before God,"

  2. 2
    deny the truth of wordnet
  3. 3
    To deny the truth of something. obsolete, transitive

    "1653, William Birchley, The Christian Moderator, Part 3, London: Richard Lowndes, p. 7, […] to make the contravening of Doctrines, to be capitall, before they be fully proved, is prejudiciall to that liberty, without which none can justify himself before God or Man:"

  4. 4
    go against, as of rules and laws wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
contradictcontradictinfringeabjureantagonizebaffle

Example

More examples

"This would contravene several articles of the Geneva Convention."

Etymology

From Middle French contravenir (French contrevenir), from Latin contraveniō.

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