contradistinguish
contradistinguish verb: to distinguish things by contrasting their different qualities.
Verb
contradistinguish (third-person singular simple present contradistinguishes, present participle contradistinguishing, simple past and past participle contradistinguished)
- To distinguish things by contrasting their different qualities.
- Reason, therefore, here, as contradistinguished to faith, I take to be the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which it has got by the use of its natural faculties ; viz. by sensation or reflection.1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- A genuinely educative experience, then, one in which instruction is conveyed and ability increased, is contradistinguished from a routine activity on one hand, and a capricious activity on the other.1916, John Dewey, Democracy and Education
Forms of contradistinguish
| third-person singular present | contradistinguishes |
|---|---|
| present participle | contradistinguishing |
| past participle | contradistinguished |
| past | contradistinguished |
Origin of contradistinguish
From contra- + distinguish.
Questions about contradistinguish
- What does contradistinguish mean?
- Contradistinguish means to distinguish things by contrasting their different qualities.
- What part of speech is contradistinguish?
- Contradistinguish is a verb.
- What is the past tense of contradistinguish?
- The past tense of contradistinguish is contradistinguished.
Words near contradistinguish in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: contradistinguish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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