contrastive
Americanadjective
-
tending to contrast; contrasting. contrastive colors.
-
studying or exhibiting the congruences and differences between two languages or dialects without reference to their origins.
contrastive linguistics.
Other Word Forms
- contrastively adverb
- uncontrastive adjective
- uncontrastively adverb
Etymology
Origin of contrastive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
To help the system understand these relationships, the researchers developed a training method called leave-one-out contrastive learning.
From Science Daily • Jan. 9, 2026
They developed FAIR-Path, a framework based on an existing machine-learning method known as contrastive learning.
From Science Daily • Dec. 17, 2025
To create a more efficient alternative, in recent years researchers have turned to models built through a technique known as contrastive self-supervised learning.
From Science Daily • Oct. 30, 2023
The kinds of silences this work tests are called relative or contrastive, and they have some overlap with the study of holes.
From Scientific American • Jul. 10, 2023
Cicero ends with a final address to Catiline, and then with a contrastive apostrophe to Jupiter—effectively putting Catiline’s decision to depart under the compulsion of a God.
From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
