contradict

«contradict» in Mova's school dictionary: to say the opposite of what they have said, showing you… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (contradict, contradicts, contradicted, contradicting)

meaning for a pupil

1) To contradict someone means to say the opposite of what they have said, showing you think they are wrong. tree →

2) If two facts or statements contradict each other, they cannot both be true. tree →

3) To contradict yourself means to say two things that do not fit together. tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths and science, a result that contradicts your prediction shows the prediction was wrong; in logic, two statements that contradict cannot both be true. In detective stories, a witness whose stories contradict each other may be lying. In manners lessons, contradicting adults rudely is discouraged, but polite disagreement is fine. Phrases: «contradict each other», «contradict yourself», «don't contradict me».

examples

• The two witnesses contradicted each other. tree →
• "Don't contradict your grandfather," said Mum. tree →
• The results of our test contradicted our prediction. tree →
• You just contradicted yourself: first you said yes, then no. tree →
• The new evidence contradicts his story. tree →
• It's fine to contradict someone politely if you have facts. tree →
• "All odd numbers end in 1" is contradicted by the number 3. tree →
• "Will you dare to contradict me?" said the step-mother. tree →

note

Regular verb: contradicted, contradicting. Noun: contradiction; adjective: contradictory. Prefix «contra-» means against, «dict» means say. In maths, one counter-example is enough to contradict a rule that says "all".

In the corpora

• When two stories contradict each other and there is no proof, the honest answer is «we don't know».

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «contradict» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.