contrary
Example Sentences
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He has faced criticism for dismissing former prime minister Trovoada in January 2025, a move ruled one year later to be contrary to the constitution.
From Barron's ● Jul. 19, 2026
The sheer reach of the Cyclospora parasite indicates other contributors at play, and despite expert recommendations to the contrary, it’s already fomenting a mild panic over produce.
From Slate ● Jul. 17, 2026
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei described Qatar's accusations, as "contrary to the principle of good neighbourliness".
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026
The news, on the contrary, helps prove that we can’t.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 25, 2026
You will see that he did the contrary of those things that must be done in order to hold one’s dominion in a region with heterogeneous customs, languages, and institutions.
From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli
We grow up to discover there are names in every culture for that — yin and yang, the Apollonian and Dionysian, Vishnu and Shiva, thesis and antithesis, the law of contraries, the dialectic.
From New York Times ● Feb. 12, 2024
Art is made of contraries, of ambivalence and ambiguity; it never wants us to feel a single thing.
From The Guardian ● May 8, 2020
She revels in detail but writes vast, moral poems that help us live in a world of contraries in which “we hold still for the camera, believing/ it will shore up time, knowing it won’t.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 11, 2016
“The knowledge of contraries is one and the same,” as Aristotle said.
From Slate ● Jul. 8, 2014
Those who are to be unhappy, think and speak only of the contraries.
From The Life of Benjamin Franklin With Many Choice Anecdotes and admirable sayings of this great man never before published by any of his biographers by Weems, Mason Locke
Vocabulary lists containing contrary
Opposites Attract
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Against All Odds: Contra and Counter
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"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, Chapters 16–19
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