contrastive

1. 1.

   of words so related that one contrasts with the other

   “`rich' and `hard-up' are contrastive terms”

   Synonymsincompatible

   Similarantonymous
2. 2.

   strikingly different; tending to contrast

   “contrasting (or contrastive) colors”

   Synonymscontrasting

   Similardifferent
3. 3.

   syntactically establishing a relation of contrast between sentences or elements of a sentence

   “disjunctive conjunctions like `but', `or', or `though' serve a contrastive function”

   Similardisjunctive

   grammar

Questions about contrastive

What does contrastive mean?

contrastive means "of words so related that one contrasts with the other". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in contrastive?

contrastive has 3 syllables: con-tra-stive. The stress falls on "con".

What is another word for contrastive?

Close synonyms include incompatible, contrasting. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is contrastive a common word?

contrastive is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.