Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A proposition derived by negating and permuting the terms of another, equivalent proposition; for example, All not-Y is not-X is the contrapositive of All X is Y.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Of, pertaining to, or produced by contraposition: as, contrapositive propositions; contrapositive conversion.
- noun In logic, a contrapositive proposition.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun logic the
inverse of theconverse of a givenproposition
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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I'm leaving out some steps here (which students always appropriately resent), but the above is all of a piece with something called the "contrapositive".
The Math of America. 2008
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The '' 'contrapositive' '' of a statement of the form "A implies B" is the [[logic]] ally equivalent statement "not-B implies not-A."
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The '' 'contrapositive' '' of a statement of the form "A implies B" is the [[logic]] ally equivalent statement "not-B implies not-A."
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We can also see this in the contrapositive: having more than one sexual partner is by definition nonmonogamous.
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A natural experiment that is the contrapositive to Korea would be Vietnam.
The Ratios, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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The contrapositive of this is that if you are not a U.S. national (e.g. you lose your nationality through the operation of the law) then it follows you are also not a citizen.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Peter Spiro on Lieberman’s Citizenship-Stripping Legislation 2010
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But mythological creatures also performed a second, often contrapositive, argumentative function; commentators who rejected evolution regularly did so by dismissing these creatures.
Archive 2008-12-01 2008
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If Messiahs are in the habit of denying themselves, surely the contrapositive is true.
Menachem Wecker: The Jewish Channel: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Precluded Himself From Being the Messiah Menachem Wecker 2010
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The contrapositive of this is that if you are not a U.S. national e.g. you lose your nationality through the operation of the law then it follows you are also not a citizen.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Peter Spiro on Lieberman’s Citizenship-Stripping Legislation 2010
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(If Messiahs are in the habit of denying themselves, surely the contrapositive is true.)
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