contrary to fact
1
7.7
- adjective
- Specialized
- Another contrary-to-fact condition: in reality, the New Jersey governor's video team is not a runaway MTV unit.
Examples
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Use this form of the verb to express a wishful notion or a proposition contrary to fact:
Blog text (12) -
Either phrase signifies that what follows is contrary to fact: Secretary Kuzu acts as if she were (not was) in the White House.
Blog text (12) -
Another contrary-to-fact condition.
Blog text (12) -
In turn, this negativity surfaces as the capacity to imagine a contrary to fact situation, IE being eaten as opposed to being alive.
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Here doubt is expressed as well as hope, possibility, desire, imagination, and conditions contrary to fact—"if our meeting were more welcoming, then it would..."
Blog text (26) -
Then there is intuition, which Jung described as the capacity to perceive possibilities—what is contrary to fact, what might be but is not.
Academic text (1993) -
This is what the grammarians call a contrary-to-fact condition—the worker is not, in fact, German or French—and so it requires the subjunctive.
Blog text (12) -
The teacher explained that using 'were' instead of 'was' creates a situation contrary to fact, as it implies something unreal.
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When creating conditional sentences that describe hypothetical scenarios, we often refer to them as contrary to fact statements.
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In grammar, a hypothetical situation like 'If I had studied harder' is an example of a statement contrary to fact.
Synonyms
3
9.4
Describing a situation that did not happen but could have
Antonyms
How Real
112
3.4
∞
1.0
126
6.9
- Specialized
1
7.7
217
3.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is directly compositional: 'contrary' (opposite) + 'to' (prepositional relation) + 'fact' (truth) yields 'opposite to fact' or 'not in accordance with reality', which a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer. Although somewhat formal or grammatical in usage, the meaning follows a transparent, cross-linguistically common pattern of adjective + preposition + noun, so prior exposure is not required to understand it.
Etymology
The phrase contrary to fact paints a small picture: contrary means 'against' and fact means 'something true'. So it describes a 'what if' situation that is 'not real' now and is used when we imagine something different from the facts.