on the contrary

1. 1.

   contrary to expectations

   “he didn't stay home; on the contrary, he went out with his friends”

   Synonymscontrarilyto the contrarycontrariwise

Questions about on the contrary

What does on the contrary mean?

on the contrary means "contrary to expectations".

What is another word for on the contrary?

Close synonyms include contrarily, to the contrary, contrariwise. 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 on the contrary a common word?

on the contrary is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.