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contradiction
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
contradiction
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
apparent
▪ However, just occasionally, the evidence of the two disciplines is in apparent contradiction.
▪ The capability for reasoning becomes increasingly logical and less subject to influence by apparent perceptual contradictions.
▪ It seems to have been a religion that was in transition, which may explain some startling contradictions or apparent contradictions.
▪ He attempted to explain apparent contradictions in testimony he gave under aggressive questioning by plaintiffs' lawyers several weeks ago.
▪ In this way, apparent contradictions between Copernican astronomy and biblical texts would be eliminated.
▪ Instead, when fully understood, the apparent contradiction may reveal a new causal factor that was not considered before.
▪ During training the student will learn from many teachers, and the junior nurse can be confused by apparent differences and contradictions.
▪ This apparent contradiction of the model by Proust's text is not a sign of the model's inadequacy but the reverse.
basic
▪ Despite this basic contradiction, he began with a notable act of conciliation.
▪ Marx believed that the basic contradictions contained in a capitalist economic system would lead to its eventual destruction.
▪ It is with this basic contradiction that Forester avoided sentimentality.
direct
▪ Schor's evidence is in direct contradiction to the neo-classical income / leisure trade-off model outlined above.
▪ Doesn't that imply a belief in intrinsic essences that is in direct contradiction with the fundamental principles of existentialism?
▪ These results still constitute, therefore, a direct contradiction of the thesis being developed here.
full
▪ Progress may be painfully fast or slow, and will be full of contradictions.
▪ The main character in the drama was full of contradictions.
▪ Myths themselves are full of contradictions and inconsistencies.
▪ He was too full of contradictions, just as my head is too full of images of him, even now.
▪ His sop to secular society is full of contradictions.
▪ If it is full of contradictions, or if it is too vague, this is very difficult.
▪ The city is full of contradictions.
fundamental
▪ This is perhaps the most difficult one and brings up a number of fundamental contradictions.
▪ Technology development strategies exhibit a fundamental logical contradiction.
▪ No increase in laws, compacts, and penalties can succeed in overcoming the fundamental contradictions of the system.
▪ It has been said to be a fundamental contradiction in the Weberian model of bureaucracy.
inherent
▪ International events have shown that there is an inherent contradiction between a one-party state and mass democracy.
▪ But the neo-communists no longer believe there is an inherent contradiction between political authoritarianism and a more free-wheeling economy, he said.
▪ Their abstract certitudes seemed far removed to him from the inherent contradictions in human nature.
▪ He argued that the international monetary system, based largely on the dollar, contained certain inherent contradictions.
internal
▪ There were too many internal contradictions which prevented the different constituencies from working effectively together.
▪ That internal contradiction means that the council tax will not survive.
▪ Rather than accusing him of anachronism, academic critics tended to concentrate their fire on internal contradictions or flawed assumptions in his policy.
▪ There is a danger of internal contradiction.
▪ His debating technique, however, disguised some fatal flaws and internal contradictions in Labour policy.
▪ Despite its internal contradictions, capitalism has continued in the West for over 200 years.
■ VERB
contain
▪ But Rousseau's blueprint contains its own contradiction.
▪ Every complex whole is therefore said to contain a principal contradiction and secondary contradictions.
▪ Welfare as a discretionary standard contains contradictions and thus provides little guidance to the disposition of trouble cases.
▪ This conflict of interest must ultimately be resolved since a social system containing such contradictions can not survive unchanged.
involve
▪ As written, the text involves a contradiction.
resolve
▪ How, then, do women engineers resolve the contradictions of their presence in a male world?
▪ The author or authors wanted to resolve apparent contradictions in order to make the law more usable and accessible.
▪ How can we resolve this apparent contradiction?
see
▪ Modern men also stipulate that they mustn't be boring, without seeing any contradiction in that thought.
▪ I did not see much contradiction.
▪ The brewers see no contradiction in their involvement.
▪ Gary does not see a contradiction.
▪ He saw no contradictions in this.
▪ Nkrumah saw this as a contradiction, and was critical, thus annoying Nyerere who should have been a natural ally.
▪ Thus Baudelaire and Flaubert can be seen without contradiction as both realists and early modernists.
▪ Ghatak did not see any contradiction between these two approaches.
seem
▪ The problem is that there's little to offer in between; high street quality seems almost a contradiction in terms.
▪ Even now, it seems a strange contradiction, but not a sinister one.
▪ Unfortunately for Carter, Spackerman's evidence of an assault followed by strangulation seemed a complete contradiction of Macarthy's opinion.
▪ This seems a contradiction on the face of it.
▪ This may seem like a contradiction.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ America is a society rich in contradiction.
▪ Gage is a man of contradictions: a vegetarian who owns a cattle ranch.
▪ His speech was full of lies and contradictions.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But Rousseau's blueprint contains its own contradiction.
▪ He has inverted the traditional precepts governing the photographic image, demonstrating the value of visual contradiction.
▪ The contradiction between faith and knowledge is thus resolved.
▪ The capability for reasoning becomes increasingly logical and less subject to influence by apparent perceptual contradictions.
▪ There is really no mystery about this contradiction.
▪ There were too many internal contradictions which prevented the different constituencies from working effectively together.
▪ These factors are conflicts and contradictions within the set of duties.
▪ This, it would appear on the surface, is one hell of a contradiction.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Contradiction

Contradiction \Con`tra*dic"tion\, n. [L. contradictio answer, objection: cf. F. contradiction.]

  1. An assertion of the contrary to what has been said or affirmed; denial of the truth of a statement or assertion; contrary declaration; gainsaying.

    His fair demands Shall be accomplished without contradiction.
    --Shak.

  2. Direct opposition or repugnancy; inconsistency; incongruity or contrariety; one who, or that which, is inconsistent.

    can he make deathless death? That were to make Strange contradiction.
    --Milton.

    We state our experience and then we come to a manly resolution of acting in contradiction to it.
    --Burke.

    Both parts of a contradiction can not possibly be true.
    --Hobbes.

    Of contradictions infinite the slave.
    --Wordsworth.

    Principle of contradiction (Logic), the axiom or law of thought that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time, or a thing must either be or not be, or the same attribute can not at the same time be affirmed and and denied of the same subject; also called the law of the excluded middle.

    Note: It develops itself in three specific forms which have been called the ``Three Logical Axioms.'' First, ``A is A.'' Second, ``A is not Not-A'' Third, ``Everything is either A or Not-A.''

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
contradiction

late 14c., from Old French contradiction or directly from Latin contradictionem (nominative contradictio) "a reply, objection, counterargument," noun of action from past participle stem of contradicere, in classical Latin contra dicere "to speak against," from contra "against" (see contra) + dicere "to speak" (see diction).

Wiktionary
contradiction

n. 1 (context uncountable English) The act of contradicting. 2 (context countable English) A statement that contradicts itself, i.e., a statement that makes a claim that the same thing is true and that it is false at the same time and in the same senses of the terms. 3 (context countable English) a logical incompatibility among two or more elements or propositions 4 (context logic countable English) A proposition that is false for all values of its variables.

Related phrases:
WordNet
contradiction

  1. n. opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas

  2. (logic) a statement that is necessarily false; "the statement `he is brave and he is not brave' is a contradiction" [syn: contradiction in terms]

  3. the speech act of contradicting someone; "he spoke as if he thought his claims were immune to contradiction"

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Contradiction

In classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical, usually opposite inversions of each other. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle's law of noncontradiction states that "One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time."

By extension, outside of classical logic, one can speak of contradictions between actions when one presumes that their motives contradict each other.

Contradiction (album)

Contradiction is the eighth studio album by The Ohio Players, and the fourth album recorded for Mercury.

Contradiction (disambiguation)

A contradiction is a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions

Contradiction may also refer to:

  • Contradiction (album), an album by The Ohio Players
  • Contradictions (album), an album by One Gud Cide
  • Contradiction, a detective FMV game by Tim Follin
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "contradiction".

Such are the circumstances of this ostentatious and improbable relation, dictated, as it too plainly appears, by the vanity of the monarch, adorned by the unblushing servility of his flatterers, and received without contradiction by a distant and obsequious senate.

To believe that a body, functioning in this way, is the creation of God, and at the same time to look on this God as a Being of absolute moral perfection, would seem a complete contradiction to the Hans Andersen child.

This obvious contradiction of the truth provoked even more hilarity, and Laevo had to wait until the noise died down a little before continuing.

This absurdity shows that the hypothesis contains a contradiction which naturally leads to untenable results.

It was Wagner who created the contradiction which puts his operas in opposition by his substitution of the sacred lance as a dramatic motive for the question.

I believe--in spite of our noisy disputes-- that it is, on the contrary, impossible for men not to become some day all at unity buried under the mass of contradictions, a Pelion on Ossa, which they themselves have raised.

But the intention of finding a basis for the laws of the Paraclete, by showing that they existed in some fashion even in earlier times, involved Tertullian in many contradictions.

In the questions as to the relationship of the Old Testament to the New, of Christ to the Apostles, of the Apostles to each other, of the Paraclete to Christ and the Apostles, he was also of necessity involved in the greatest contradictions.

In a more practical attempt to push the concern from his mind, and in direct contradiction of his earlier vow, he had managed to steal two purses before he turned into the familiar twisted street with its uneven, cart-rutted surface and disordered tiers of neglected and abandoned dwellings on either side.

For if the diversity exists as regards diverse things, and in diverse subjects, this would not suffice for the nature of contrariety, nor even for the nature of contradiction, e.

In both cases the procedural autonomy, differential application, and territorialized links to various segments of the population, together with the specific and limited exercise of legitimate violence, were not generally in contradiction with the principle of a coherent and unified ordering.

Bakhtin closes Tolstoy down, makes his contradictions less provocative, and never satisfactorily confronts the complex issue of personality in the Tolstoyan novel.

His glory, his legs and his voice, perplexed Maggie with an unanalyzed sense of contradiction and unfitness.

When the breakdown of the image yields contradiction, we can overcome the contradiction in either of two directions: by destroying all meaning and ending up with a set of empty logical structures, or else by returning to a wholly unanalyzed unity, whether of the original image or a new one.

Too many impressions were striking his underloaded brain, and his mind would soon be a tangled mass of contradictions.