[f. as prec. + -NESS.]
1. The state or quality of being contradictory.
c. 1730. A. Baxter, Enq. Nat. Soul, II. 180 (T.). This objection from the contradictoriness of our dreams sounds big at first.
1791. J. Whitaker, On Gibbon, lx. (R.). Confounding himself by the contradictoriness of his own ideas.
1816. J. Gilchrist, Philos. Etym., 158. There is so much … self-contradictoriness in what Horne Tooke advances on verbs and participles.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul, II. 590. The apparent contradictoriness to human reason of divine facts.
2. Disposition to contradict or oppose whatever is said; contradictiousness.
1810. Bentham, Packing (1821), 102. Contradictoriness … manifested, in terms of a certain degree of strength, towards some proposition or propositions, that have been advanced by some one else.
1872. Geo. Eliot, Middlem., v. 75. He was not without contradictoriness and rebellion even towards his own resolve.
1887. Old Man’s Favour, I. I. iv. 89. Tell folks to go one way, and, from sheer contradictoriness, they start gaily off in the other.
