Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Contrariety; opposition; antagonism.
- noun Perverseness; habitual obstinacy.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun state or quality of being contrary; opposition; inconsistency; contrariety; perverseness; obstinacy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The state of being
contrary
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun deliberate and stubborn unruliness and resistance to guidance or discipline
- noun a fussy and eccentric disposition
Etymologies
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Examples
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If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it.
March « 2010 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2010
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If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it.
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To be believable to the reader, they can’t be blatantly contradictory ie today they hate Jane, tomorrow they love Jane – unless that very contrariness is part of the plot.
Back on the horse ... karenmiller 2007
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By a natural perversity of disposition, which my nursemaids called contrariness,
Eothen 2003
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By a natural perversity of disposition, which my nursemaids called contrariness, I felt the more strongly for my creed when I saw it despised among men.
Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East Alexander William Kinglake 1850
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She, again, proves her "contrariness" in the Bloomberg interview, by outing Treasury Secretary Geithner's rotten math that tries to convince subtraction takes nothing from a sum.
Who Is Elizabeth Warren, and Why Doesn't Corporate Government Care? 2009
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I appeal to the White community to turn away from "contrariness" as the motor for political debate, and to help us give every citizen in this Province a stake in this Province.
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She might be out of patience with Sara's "contrariness," but she spoiled and petted her for all that, for the girl was the very core of her childless heart.
Further Chronicles of Avonlea Lucy Maud 1920
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The bitter ones sneer or reproach or laugh at this "contrariness" in women they do not understand, and which, baffling their intellect, appears to them to be irrational folly.
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She might be out of patience with Sara's "contrariness," but she spoiled and petted her for all that, for the girl was the very core of her childless heart.
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