contrari

Contrari is a term used in several Romance languages and in philosophical contexts. In Italian, contrari is the masculine plural form of contrario and commonly means “the opposites” or “the opponents,” while the feminine plural is contrarie. In Spanish and Portuguese, cognates appear as contrarios or contrários, referring to things that are opposite or opposed. The word typically functions as both an adjective and a noun, depending on the context.

The noun and adjective derive from Latin contra “against” and the suffix -arius, forming a family of words that express opposition or contrast. In everyday language, contrari can describe opposing views, objects, or forces, and in formal discourse it often appears in discussions of polarity, polarity pairs, or logical oppositions.

In philosophy, contraries are a key concept in Aristotelian logic. Contraries are pairs of universal propositions about the same subject with opposite qualities, such as “All S are P” and “No S are P.” These propositions cannot both be true, but they can both be false when some S are P and some S are not P. This relationship is distinct from contradictories, which are statements that cannot both be true and cannot both be false at the same time.

Usage notes: In English translations, contraries are often described as the opposites of universal propositions. In modern logic and linguistics, the idea of contraries remains useful for discussing opposition, antonymy, and the range of possible states between fully inclusive and fully exclusive claims.