Word.ws English Dictionary

contraries

contraries is the plural of contrary.

Meaning of contrary

Noun

contrary (plural contraries)

  1. The opposite.
    • No contraries hold more antipathy
      Than I and such a knave.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  2. One of a pair of propositions that cannot both be simultaneously true, though they may both be false.
    • If two universals differ in quality, they are contraries; as, every vine is a tree; no vine is a tree. These can never be both true together; but they may be both false.1725, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, […], 2nd edition, London: […] John Clark and Richard Hett, […], Emanuel Matthews, […], and Richard Ford, […]...
  3. (historical) A type of loaded die.

See all 14 meanings of contrary

Questions about contraries

What is contraries the plural of?
Contraries is the plural of contrary.

Words near contraries in the dictionary

  1. contrarians
  2. contrariant
  3. contrariantly
  4. contrariants
  5. contraried
  6. contraries
  7. contrarietie
  8. contrarieties
  9. contrariety
  10. contrarily
  11. contrariness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contraries (page history and authors); contrary (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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Cite this entry: “contraries.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contraries. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.