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Definition
go against, as of rules and laws; or deny the truth of- Perhaps they didn't contravene any regulations.Sophie Kinsella -- Confessoins of a Shopaholic
- "All his actions are in contravention of common sense and logic," he continued.Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Brothers Karamazov
- You think you could get me to contravene proper authority because I expressed some little affection?'William Styron -- Sophie's Choice
- Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws.Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Selected Essays
- Unless he was ordered to say what he did by an authority powerful enough to contravene the laws.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Identity
- "I do not contravene that assertion," was his quiet answer.Jules Verne -- A Journey to the Center of the Earth
- But not contravene its definition to imply the very opposite.Christopher Paolini -- Eldest
- Let no one, god or goddess, contravene my present edict; all assent to it that I may get this business done, and quickly.Homer -- The Iliad
- To the last?' asked Louisa contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.Charles Dickens -- Hard Times
- This heretical suggestion had been squelched because, as one of Cleburne's fellow officers said, "its propositions contravene the principles on which we fight."James M. McPherson -- What They Fought For - 1861-1865
- At last Doctor Pedro Recio Agilers of Tirteafuera promised to let him have supper that night though it might be in contravention of all the aphorisms of Hippocrates.Miguel de Cervantes -- Don Quixote
- This is the more necessary where the frame of the government is so compounded that the laws of the whole are in danger of being contravened by the laws of the parts.Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers
- 13 If the Executive misbehaves by perverting the instructions or contravening the views of the Senate, the Senate will want to punish the abuser and defend their authority.Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers — Modern English Edition 2
- If I tried to send you through on my own, it would be in direct contravention of the Law, and I'm not willing to risk that for you, biscuit, no matter how much I might like you personally.Cassandra Clare -- City of Glass
- It would have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless.George Eliot -- Middlemarch
- She knew that it was all sentiment, all baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward omens.Thomas Hardy -- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- For one thing, the mayor had no authority to single-handedly contravene the city council's vote to let the Fugees use the field for six months—a vote, after all, he himself had insisted on when others had wondered if a less formal arrangement might have sufficed.Warren St. John -- Outcasts United
- From her elevated seat she looked upon the people calmly, pleasantly, and apparently so intent upon studying them as to be unconscious of the interest she herself was exciting; and, what was unusual—nay, in violent contravention of the custom among women of rank in public—she looked at them with an open face.Lew Wallace -- Ben Hur
- Already, however, the legal tongues are wagging, and one young law student is loudly asserting that the rights of the owner are already completely sacrificed, his property being held in contravention of the statues of mortmain, since the tiller, as emblemship, if not proof, of delegated possession, is held in a dead hand.Bram Stoker -- Dracula
- I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus: any more than I can be content," he added, with emphasis, "to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains — my nature, that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed — made useless.Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre