counterfactual

/ˌkaʊn.tə(ɹ)ˈfæk.tʃu.əl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Canada/ˌkaʊntɚˈfæktʃuəl/

counterfactual adjective: contrary to known or agreed facts; untrue.

Adjective

counterfactual (not comparable)

Contrary to known or agreed facts; untrue.
- a leaderless disinformation campaign, with claims leaping from conspiracy theorists to state propagandists to alternative-media outlets and back—an ecosystem I call the Counterfactual Community.2021, Eliot Higgins, We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News, page 115
Synonyms:

contrafactual
Of or in comparison to a hypothetical state of the world.
- What would have happened if those great Chinese voyages [by Zheng He] had continued? It's one of those questions in counter-factual history about which it is impossible to be sure.2014 September 15, Martin Gayford, “There's more to Ming than a vase [print version: 16 August 2014, pp. R6–R7]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review), archived from the original on 15 Nov 2014
- The counterfactual 1982 of the novel plays variations on our historical record and contains clear allusions to the present.2019 April 11, Marcel Theroux, “Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan review – intelligent mischief”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 04 Jul 2019

counterfactual (plural counterfactuals)

A claim, hypothesis, or other belief that is contrary to the facts.

Synonyms:

counterfact, misapprehension, misconception, misunderstanding, falsehood, misinformation
A hypothetical state of the world, used to assess the impact of an action.
- Just as counterfactuals employ too much imagination to qualify as historical works, alternate history often labors under too great a load of artificial "facts" to take flight as fiction.2004 September 5, Laura Miller, “Imagine”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 15 Jul 2021
- We can spin out complicated counterfactuals that justify the Iraq invasion, and complicated counterfactuals that make it look even worse.2010 September 1, Ross Douthat, “Iraq in the Long Run”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2022, retrieved 15 Jul 2021
A conditional statement in which the conditional clause is false.

The implicit counterfactual — that these members would support gun control if not for the $1,000 they received from the NRA — seems unlikely to me.2015 December 3, Lee Drutman, “Here's the real reason we don't have gun reform”, in Vox, archived from the original on 05 Feb 2016:
Roese also says counterfactuals can serve emotional purposes.2016 February 11, Noah Berlatsky, quoting Neal Roese, “'What if?': Why we can't get enough of counterfactual shows”, in The Guardian...
Imagine a counterfactual in which we started relaxing restrictions at an even earlier time, just as the cases began to trend downward.2021 May 14, Dashiell Young-Saver, “The Math of Ending the Pandemic: Exponential Growth and Decay”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived...

plural	counterfactuals

From counter- + factual.

What does counterfactual mean?: Counterfactual means contrary to known or agreed facts; untrue.
How do you use counterfactual in a sentence?: The implicit counterfactual — that these members would support gun control if not for the $1,000 they received from the NRA — seems unlikely to me.
What part of speech is counterfactual?: Counterfactual can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce counterfactual?: Counterfactual is pronounced /ˌkaʊntɚˈfæktʃuəl/ (Canada).

Adapted from Wiktionary: counterfactual (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-counterfactual.wav.

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