Word.ws English Dictionary

contravariance

contravariance noun: the reversal of the order of data types acted upon by an operator.

Noun

contravariance (countable and uncountable, plural contravariances)

  1. (object-oriented programming) The reversal of the order of data types acted upon by an operator.
    • I get why with covariance I can return a Dog (a Dog is a Mammal), but why does contravariance work the other way? Shouldn't it accept a derived type when it expects a base type? Contravariance is consistent with Postel's Law: […]2005, Jesse Liberty, Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 47
  2. A functor which reverses composition.
  3. Of vectors, the property of scaling inversely with a change of basis, as opposed to covariance.

contravariance meaning in Tamil

contravariance in Tamil

எதிருருமாறுகை, எதிர் உருமாறுகை

Forms of contravariance

pluralcontravariances

Origin of contravariance

From contra- + variance.

Questions about contravariance

What does contravariance mean?
Contravariance means the reversal of the order of data types acted upon by an operator.
What is contravariance in Tamil?
Contravariance in Tamil is எதிருருமாறுகை, எதிர் உருமாறுகை. See Contravariance meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is contravariance?
Contravariance is a noun.
What is the plural of contravariance?
The plural of contravariance is contravariances.

Words near contravariance in the dictionary

  1. contratenor
  2. contratenors
  3. contraterrene
  4. contravallation
  5. contravallations
  6. contravariance
  7. contravariances
  8. contravariant
  9. contravariant functor
  10. contravariant functors
  11. contravariantly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contravariance (page history and authors); contravariance (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-contravariance.wav.

Cite this entry: “contravariance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contravariance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.