contradiction

From Middle English contradiccioun, contradiction, from Old French contradiction, from Latin contrādictiō, from contrādīcō (“speak against”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌkɒntɹəˈdɪkʃən/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌkɑːntɹəˈdɪkʃən/
• Rhymes: -ɪkʃən

contradiction (countable and uncountable, plural contradictions)

1. (countable, uncountable) The act of contradicting.

   His contradiction of the proposal was very interesting.

2. (countable) A statement that contradicts itself, i.e., a statement that claims that the same thing is true and that it is false at the same time and in the same senses of the terms.

   There is a contradiction in Clarence Page's statement that a woman should have the right to choose and decide for herself whether to have an abortion and at the same time she should not have that right.

   There is a contradiction in what you say: she can't be both married and single.

3. (countable) A logical inconsistency among two or more elements or propositions.

   Marx believed that the contradictions of capitalism would lead to socialism.

4. (logic, countable) A proposition that is false for all values of its propositional variables or Boolean atoms.

• (statement that contradicts itself): oxymoron
• (proposition that is false for all values of its variables): ↯, ⇒⇐, ⊥, ↮, ※

• (antonym(s) of “proposition that is false for all values of its variables”): tautology

• (proposition that is false for all values of its variables): contingency, tautology

• contradict
• contradictory

Borrowed from Latin contradictiōnem.

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.tʁa.dik.sjɔ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

contradiction f (plural contradictions)

1. contradiction (clarification of this definition is needed)

• esprit de contradiction

• contradictoire
• contredire

• “contradiction”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.