1 ~ to sth different from sth; against sth:
Contrary to popular belief, many cats dislike milk. * The government has decided that the publication of the report would be 'contrary to the public interest'. * Contrary to expectations and the weather forecast, we had a fine day for the experiment.
2 [onlybeforenoun] completely different in nature or direction
SYNOPPOSITE:
contrary advice / opinions / arguments * The contrary view is that prison provides an excellent education-in crime.
noun (the contrary) [sing.] the opposite fact, event or situation:
In the end the contrary was proved true: he was innocent and she was guilty.
IDIOMS
on the contrary used to introduce a statement that says the opposite of the last one:
'It must have been terrible.' 'On the contrary, I enjoyed every minute.'
quite the contrary used to emphasize that the opposite of what has been said is true:
I don't find him funny at all. Quite the contrary.
to the contrary showing or proving the opposite:
Show me some evidence to the contrary (= proving that sth is not true). * I will expect to see you on Sunday unless I hear anything to the contrary (= that you are not coming).
Part of speech: adjective
(formal, disapproving) (usually of children) behaving badly; choosing to do or say the opposite of what is expected:
She was such a contrary child-it was impossible to please her.
seealsoCONTRARY
contrarily adverb
contrariness noun [U]
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for contrary is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is contrary a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, contrary is tagged as adjective.
Does contrary appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — contrary appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
