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What is "contradictory"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
contradictory
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
apparently
▪ Explanations for these apparently contradictory tendencies will not be found by taking an instrumental approach to family law.
▪ Which of these apparently contradictory views is nearer to the truth?
▪ Williams was a man who was able to hold many apparently contradictory ideas in harmony.
▪ Had this apparently contradictory programme been worked out over a long period, it might have seemed more logical.
▪ Both of these apparently contradictory statements are obviously true, but only at the level of empirical observation.
▪ I think that what links those two apparently contradictory aspects is precisely a concern with morality.
often
▪ Attitudes to addiction are complicated and often contradictory.
▪ Sam assigned a team to organize the ideas into categories and make sense out of the wide-ranging and often contradictory criticisms.
▪ Indeed, there exists an equally strong, and in this context often contradictory, philosophical premiss, that of paternalism.
▪ Here the data are often contradictory and difficult to interpret.
▪ The evidence here is often contradictory, and suggests that in practice, there were variations in what was asked of women.
▪ These influences are strong, and often contradictory.
▪ With regard to the search for consensus the results are often contradictory.
▪ First, these needs were themselves ambiguous and often contradictory.
seemingly
▪ Many of these seemingly contradictory properties of the agents are related to dose.
▪ The editors of Consumer Reports Travel Letter thus were struck by the seemingly contradictory results of three recent airline quality reports.
▪ With these two seemingly contradictory attitudes in mind, underline all the adjectives you've used.
▪ The new account of his life shows a complex and at times seemingly contradictory person.
▪ Case said these seemingly contradictory deals were simple exercises in economic balance of power.
sometimes
▪ The result is, as we have seen, a difficult and sometimes contradictory compromise.
▪ Details of Dixon's life are sparse and sometimes contradictory.
▪ The aims of education or complex and sometimes contradictory.
▪ Their position is complex, sometimes contradictory and occasionally uncomfortable.
▪ The ambiguity of something so ill-defined argued for on such different, and sometimes contradictory grounds, needs serious analysis.
▪ Gender identities are ways of life, multi-faceted and sometimes contradictory.
■ NOUN
demand
▪ The contradictory demands of justifying and criticizing national prejudice can be seen in the everyday discourse of racism.
message
▪ Very often in our work we give contradictory messages.
nature
▪ These arguments provide the foundation for Simmel's account of the contradictory nature of modern life.
▪ Have you had this contradictory nature for very long?
▪ They may be more aware of the contradictory nature of their actual relationship with the texts they read.
▪ It is the contradictory nature of humankind that makes the struggle with evil so complicated.
▪ The contradictory nature of the process allows for no ultimate resolution.
statement
▪ In addition each of the gospels contains contradictory statements about the same event.
▪ Vague, contradictory statements of intent are not enough.
▪ Both of these apparently contradictory statements are obviously true, but only at the level of empirical observation.
▪ He was acquitted on May 25, 1990, largely because of contradictory statements by witnesses.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Upon further questioning, the witnesses gave inconsistent and sometimes contradictory answers.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Candidates must make decisions quickly, sometimes with little or contradictory information.
▪ Case said these seemingly contradictory deals were simple exercises in economic balance of power.
▪ His policies, especially in the first two years of his presidency, often have been confusing and contradictory.
▪ If I took any of this particularly seriously I would risk suffering from nutritional whiplash, pursuing health in precisely contradictory binges.
▪ Moreover. such goals that can be indicated are frequently vague, multiple and contradictory.
▪ Recently, I have begun to notice another phenomenon: contradictory placenames.
▪ The result is, as we have seen, a difficult and sometimes contradictory compromise.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Contradictory

Contradictory \Con`tra*dict"o*ry\, a. [LL. contradictorius: cf. F. contradictoire.]

  1. Affirming the contrary; implying a denial of what has been asserted; also, mutually contradicting; inconsistent. ``Contradictory assertions.''
    --South.

  2. Opposing or opposed; repugnant.

    Schemes . . . contradictory to common sense.
    --Addisn.

Contradictory

Contradictory \Con`tra*dict"o*ry\, n.; pl. Contradictories.

  1. A proposition or thing which denies or opposes another; contrariety.

    It is common with princes to will contradictories.
    --Bacon.

  2. pl. (Logic) propositions with the same terms, but opposed to each other both in quality and quantity.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
contradictory

1530s, "mutually opposed, at variance," from Late Latin contradictorius "containing a contradiction or objection," from contradictus, past participle of contradicere (see contradiction). Meaning "fond of contradicting" is from 1891. Used earlier as a noun (late 14c.).

Wiktionary
contradictory

a. 1 That contradicts something, such as an argument. 2 That is itself a contradiction. 3 That is diametrically opposed to something. 4 mutually exclusive. 5 Tending to contradict or oppose, contrarious. n. (context logic English) Any of a pair of propositions, that cannot both be true or both be false.

WordNet
contradictory

  1. adj. of words or propositions so related that both cannot be true and both cannot be false; "`perfect' and `imperfect' are contradictory terms"

  2. that confounds or contradicts or confuses [syn: confounding]

  3. in disagreement; "the figures are at odds with our findings"; "contradictory attributes of unjust justice and loving vindictiveness"- John Morley [syn: at odds(p), conflicting, self-contradictory]

  4. unable to be both true at the same time [syn: mutually exclusive]

  5. n. two propositions are contradictories if both cannot be true (or both cannot be false) at the same time

Usage examples of "contradictory".

Unlike Bolos, they are entirely capable of simultaneously entertaining mutually contradictory beliefs, and their capacity to question and doubt their past actions and decisions is .

To explain contradictory statements in the older and later parts of the Veda, Brahminical learning makes use of the subtleties of an harmonistical method of interpretation.

The two most authoritative German writers on the subject, Eberhard Zeller and Professor Gerhard Ritter, give contradictory accounts.

Sometimes Jacom got the same information, later, from Carus Fraxinus but when he received contradictory accounts he had not the slightest idea which to favour.

Since accounts of the event are scarce and contradictory, the exact date of the polemic is unknown, and the time of Judaization is confused with the moment when the three dream interpreters visited the Khazar capital.

Von Kharkov was lost, adrift in the vast sea of new and contradictory memories.

She would not share with this disapproving Manxman her shattered dream of matrimony, or her contradictory, incompatible longings.

It did Walthers no good to point out that these requirements were mutually contradictory, so it was no surprise to him that when the truck-mounted vibrators did their thing the petrological data were no use at all.

Ships calling for weapons, pilots demanding information, the local air defense group issuing contradictory orders.

One such circuitous path is traced by the history of large-scale colonial slave production in the Americas between the late seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, a history that is not precapitalist but rather within the complex and contradictory developments of capital.

These tormenting spirits frequently cause their victims to commit deeds of violence upon themselves and do not seem to suffer from pain which they inflict upon the physical body of the sensitive, yet, contradictory as it may seem, many labor under the delusion that the body of the mortal is their own.

Subject, but both these terms are never predicable of the same Subject in the same relation: such pairs of terms are called Contradictories.

It is symbolic terms, such as X and x, that are properly said to be contradictories in relation to any subject whatever, S or M.

The distinction between Positive and Negative terms is not of much value in Logic, what importance would else attach to it being absorbed by the more definite distinction of contradictories.

And, on the other hand, as we have seen, when positive and negative terms are not contradictory, they are misleading.