contradistinguish

English

Etymology

contra- +‎ distinguish

Verb

contradistinguish (third-person singular simple present contradistinguishes, present participle contradistinguishing, simple past and past participle contradistinguished)

1. (transitive) To distinguish things by contrasting their different qualities.
   • 1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

     Reason, therefore, here, as contradistinguished to faith, I take to be the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which it has got by the use of its natural faculties ; viz. by sensation or reflection.

   • 1916, John Dewey, Democracy and Education:

     A genuinely educative experience, then, one in which instruction is conveyed and ability increased, is contradistinguished from a routine activity on one hand, and a capricious activity on the other.

Related terms

• contradistinction
• contradistinctive
• contradistinctively

Translations

contrast and differentiate

• Greek: αντιδιαστέλλω (el) (antidiastéllo)