How to use contradictory in a sentence
37 example sentences · adjective, noun
Contradictory means that contradicts something, such as an argument. Example: “The witness knitted together his testimony from contradictory pieces of hearsay.”
Examples of contradictory by meaning
adjectiveThat contradicts something, such as an argument.
- This wide variety of genuinely contradictory holy sutras generated a serious problem in later Chinese and Japanese Buddhism.2004, Robert Zeuschner, “Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism”, in Asian Thought: Traditions of India, China, Japan & Tibet, volume I, Echo...
adjectiveThat is itself a contradiction.
- Our attitudes toward sharks are contradictory.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 149
More sentences with contradictory
- The witness knitted together his testimony from contradictory pieces of hearsay.From the entry knit
- An argument is valid if and only if the set consisting of both (1) all of its premises and (2) the contradictory of its conclusion is inconsistent.From the entry valid
- Two events from the past week help crystallize this strange, contradictory moment for the U.S. economy.2026 June 13, Ben Casselman, “Wages Are Falling. Wealth Is Surging. No Wonder Americans Are Unhappy.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry crystallize
- We have a closed circle, and a contradictory one, due to the negation operator in the definition.2020 January 30, Richard Johns, “Why Physicalism Seems to Be (and Is) Incompatible with Intentionality”, in Acta Analytica, →DOI, archived…. From the entry x
- One or two were hurriedly fetching ropes and yelling contradictory orders, from which I deduced that Mr.2007, Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, page 320. From the entry certifiably
- Our mesorah does not simply say two contradictory things and let them sit without comment.2006 April 27, Lisa, “Spilling out drops of wine at the Seder”, in soc.culture.jewish.moderated (Usenet). From the entry mesorah
- And the lines "whitelessness" shares the contradictory property with the black spot: it is "whiteless."2004, Floyd Merrell, “Neither "True" nor "False" nor Meaningless: Meditation on the Pragmatics of Knowing Becoming”, in John R. Shook…. From the entry whitelessness
- Demeanors that are apologetic and overly polite are inherently contradictory to demeanors that exhibit fear and anger.1993, “Interrogation: The Kinesics Technique”, in John J. Fay, editor, Encyclopedia of Security Management, →ISBN, page 418. From the entry demeanor
- But even within this context of hemispheric isolation, Havana’s diplomacy is strikingly contradictory.1975, W. Raymond Duncan, “Problems of Cuban Foreign Policy, chapter 20”, in Irving Louis Horowitz, editor, Cuban Communism, 5th edition…. From the entry isolation
- So he seemed very contradictory to me.2025 August 28, thetrashcompact, “I have never watched tsitp, but I think I have a good grasp of the show.”, in reddit, archived from the…. From the entry up to
- Volatile yet stubborn, self-interested yet a modern Joan of Arc—criticisms of Richardson were as contradictory as they claimed her to be.2020, Lindsay Harroff, “From Sitting In to Sitting Out: Gloria Richardson and the 1963 Cambridge Movement”, in Lesli K. Pace, Sean Patrick…. From the entry Joan of Arc
- In this contradictory process, the class balances within the nationalist alliance would also begin to shift against the semiproletariat.2015, Arif Dirlik, Alexander Woodside, Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society, →ISBN, page 241. From the entry semiproletariat
- The mapping inside China was unclear and somewhat contradictory.2009, Sara Sheridan, The Secret Mandarin, Avon, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 121. From the entry shanghae
- Net child labor comprises subphenomena with different, sometimes contradictory, evolutions.2009, Hugh D. Hindman, editor, The World of Child Labor: An Historical and Regional Survey, Armonk, N.Y.; London: M. E. Sharpe, →ISBN…. From the entry subphenomenon
- The narrator’s judgment that the girl is “inexperienced but active” cannot quite restore coherency to her image, which remains contradictory.1995, Simone Vauthier, “Little Red Riding Hood Rides Again: A Reading of David Arnason’s “Girl and Wolf””, in Theo D’haen, Hans Bertens…. From the entry initiatee
- For Karl Löwith and Karl Jaspers and, more recently and nuancedly, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Nietzsche's philosophy is intrinsically oppositional or "contradictory."1994, Babette E Babich, Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science, page 41. From the entry nuancedly
- If two chronicles seemed contradictory, instead of trying to choose between them, a rationalization (epicycle) was devised to cover both.1978, The Journal of the Siam Society, volumes 66-67, page 152. From the entry epicycle
- Ask a dozen persons to tell you what they know about insulin and you will get some surprising and contradictory answers.1926, The Survey Volume 56, 65. From the entry insulin
- As a piece of writing, the rambling and often contradictory manifesto has the pathos of the Unabomber manifesto but lacks the ideological coherency.2023 October 28, Elizabeth Spiers, “A Tech Overlord’s Horrifying, Silly Vision for Who Should Rule the World”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry manifesto
- With two such wildly contradictory versions of why and how NBC News spiked Farrow’s Weinstein story, it’s difficult to determine what objectively occurred.2017 October 11, Lloyd Grove, “How NBC ‘Killed’ Ronan Farrow’s Weinstein Exposé”, in Daily Beast. From the entry spike
- Whether Bannon was sacked, resigned or left by mutual agreement – as usual with the Trump administration there are contradictory accounts – is immaterial.2017 August 20, “The Observer view on Donald Trump’s presidency”, in The Observer. From the entry chaotically
- The system has been the focus of several studies, with complex and sometimes contradictory results, making an overview of its functioning difficult to obtain.2017, C Martin, A Karkas, J-M Prades, “Tubotympanic system functioning”, in Eur Ann Otorhinolaryngol Head Neck Dis, volume 134, number 3…. From the entry tubotympanic
- This is a critical error, which undermines the report and leads the advisory group to make a series of contradictory and insupportable recommendations.2012 May 7, “Jennifer Buckingham, Mistakes writ large if reading goes wrong”, in The Sydney Morning Herald. From the entry insupportable
- This sounds contradictory to the earlier advice not to accept extra or unnecessary tasks and not to gold plate requirements, but it is not.2008, Wayne Turk, Common Sense Project Management, American Society for Quality, →ISBN, Chapter 10: An Introduction, Continued Project…. From the entry gold plate
- If a person is developed merely in an intellectual, ratiocinative way, then he will be a contradictory mix of cleverness and savagery.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London…. From the entry ratiocinative
- One-year and two-year secretarial courses were offered, including an oxymorous liberal arts-secretarial "church secretarial certificate" for those who wished to combine somewhat contradictory disciplines.1979 July, Eugene H. Sloan, “Hallowed Traditions Marked Tennessee College”, in Rutherford County Historical Society Publication No. 13…. From the entry oxymorous
- But all his desires were contradictory.1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 115. From the entry Orphic
- She continually strove to articulate an unambiguous race pride in a woman’s voice that was true to the complex and contradictory poetic details of black people’s lives.2005, Elizabeth Alexander, “Introduction”, in The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (American Poets Project; 19), New York, N.Y.: The Library of…. From the entry celebratoriness
- You get the negation of a proposition if you insert "not" (or some equivalent expression) into it in such a way as to form a contradictory of it.2001, Mark Sainsbury, chapter 1, in Logical Forms — An Introduction to Philosophical Logic, 2nd edition, Blackwell Publishing, →ISBN, §4…. From the entry negation
- The most plausible explanation for these contradictory statements is to be found in the assumption that the two dates given are based on two different calendars.1986, Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Cult and Calendar Reform of Jeroboam I”, in King, Cult, and Calendar in Ancient Israel: Collected Studies…. From the entry Etanim
- Did Lothair imagine that the society of those people (such as it was) existed because of their demented notions and by means of their contradictory institutions?1959, Paul Goodman, The Empire City. From the entry no such thing
- The one new law that this country needs is one that will make it a banishable offense to preach or teach anything contradictory to established fact.1928, Joseph Collins, The doctor looks at marriage and medicine. From the entry banishable
- For Schmitt, such a conception is contradictory, since he believes that in democracy such a will has to be pregiven at the outset and cannot be the product of discussion.2002, Radhika Desai, “Fetishizing Phantoms: Carl Schmitt, Chantal Mouffe, and "The Political"”, in Abigail B. Bakan, Eleanor MacDonald…. From the entry pregiven
- The young dancer is muted and hardly gets a word in edgeways, as the (male) troupe leader and her mother hijack each question and provide answers which are sometimes contradictory.1999, Felicia Hughes-Freeland, “Dance on Film: Strategy and Serendipity”, in Theresa J. Buckland, editor, Dance in the Field: Theory…. From the entry get a word in edgeways
- It is not enough to say that he uses the word in several “senses”; he uses it in two contradictory senses as to whether it includes or excludes evil deeds.1996, Harvey C[laflin] Mansfield[, Jr.], Machiavelli's Virtue, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, pages 6–7. From the entry vertu
Meaning of contradictory
- adjective That contradicts something, such as an argument.
- adjective That is itself a contradiction.
- adjective That is diametrically opposed to something.
Questions about contradictory in a sentence
- How do you use contradictory in a sentence?
- Contradictory is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “The witness knitted together his testimony from contradictory pieces of hearsay.”
- What is a short sentence with contradictory?
- “But all his desires were contradictory.”
- What does contradictory mean?
- Contradictory means that contradicts something, such as an argument.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: contradictory (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use contradictory in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/contradictory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
