Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Distinction by contrasting or opposing qualities.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Distinction by opposite qualities; direct contrast: generally preceded by in and followed by to.
Wiktionary
- n. Distinction by contrast; the displaying of something, A, to show what B is not.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Distinction by contrast.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a distinction drawn on the basis of contrast
Etymologies
- contra- + distinction (Wiktionary)
Examples
““Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era].””
“And, nonetheless, we regularly see him applauded in contradistinction to President Obama.”
The Huffington Post: Kathleen Osborn: 10 Reasons Why Reagan Is Not the Answer
“That goes a long way toward explaining why results for “socialism” and “capitalism” are nearly statistically independent, I had the impression they were being asked in contradistinction to each other.”
“Your definition of Christian, in contradistinction to my second one, goes a long way toward proving what Kamal was getting at.”
“From dime novels and penny dreadfuls through to the pulp boom of the early 20th century which gave us the modern commercial genres of Western, Crime, Romance, Science Fiction and so on, that process continues, with all these genres being defined as “pulp fiction” which by now is intrinsically in contradistinction to “literary fiction”.”
“Sistani, in contradistinction, was happy as pigs in the popcorn.”
“(And then we converts always seem ever afterwards to view Catholicism only in contradistinction to Protestantism.)”
“In its current sense the phrase probably descends from seventeenth-century Scottish Presbyterians, “the Covenanters having adopted blue as their color in contradistinction to the royal red.””
“Design is the purposeful arrangement of parts by an intelligent agent in contradistinction to purposeless forces.”
“The general sense is that each order knows itself in contradistinction to what it is not.”
Notes on ''The Abyss of the Past': Psychoanalysis in Schelling's Ages of the World (1815)'
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘contradistinction’.
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EN - longest (>15 char) words
compartmentalisation, compartmentalization, counterrevolution..., counterrevolutionary, electroencephalogram, electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., institutionalisation, institutionalization and 634 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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Literary critical terms
cathexis, catachresis, polyvocal, alterity, liminality, liminal, limn, erasure, metonymic, intertextual, intrapoetic, contradistinction and 66 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. II
cicurate, circumforaneous, codger, comiconomenclaturist, constable, contradistinction, contraindicated, counterpane, coxcomb, decalcomania, decanal, decoction and 307 more...
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
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I do not like them, Sam I Am
Words that, for various reasons, I wish we could do without.
copacetic, gamut, horehound, lewd, membrane, metrics, mucous, mucus, negligee, nostril, odious, odor and 143 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1401 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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kingrat47's Words
procrustean, devolution, cacophony, hippopotamus, crunch, beware, chortled, sibilant, subtle, undermine, acromegaly, acropolis and 645 more...
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Oblivion
By David Foster Wallace
ossify, reverie, hypergeometric, emetic, mien, cruciform, accreted, perpend, rheostat, predilections, coccyx, hirsute and 178 more...
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Dictionary.com Words of the Days of 2000
1999 · 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008
segue, palimpsest, bête noire, farrago, expatiate, nadir, protean, fulsome, constitutional, quondam, sinecure, vainglory and 324 more...
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Megnum's Words
buttercup, encephalitis, titular, sanguine, ubiquitous, ethereal, pusillanimous, apoptosis, xenophobe, circumvent, philistine, ostensibly and 15 more...
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Balsamic's Words
vignette, itinerant, maladies, hagiographic, dour, ethereal, credence, solemnity, provenance, vestigial, dissonance, melancholia and 221 more...
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rduke's Words
misguggle, ken, sere, etiolated, gelid, digladiate, popinjay, bathykolpian, conglaciation, hyperborean, callipygian, vagile and 1253 more...
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idiolect's Words
pernicious, idiosyncratic, predilection, idiolect, tamarind, tantamount, contradistinction
Tweets
Looking for tweets for contradistinction.
whichbe This word sounds like a P.C. way to say contradiction. Jul 22, 2008
skipvia PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary Oct 15, 2007