8 uses
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1 —7 uses as in:
on the contrary
Definition
an expression used to intensify denial of an idea
- Meetings were held; letters were read out; so-and-so has promised so much; on the contrary, Mr —— won't give a penny.1 (78% in)
- Others, on the contrary, maintain that women are half divine and worship them on that account.2 (29% in)
- On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted.3 (87% in)
- On the contrary, it is harassed and distracted with hates and grievances.4 (5% in)
- The rooms differ so completely; they are calm or thunderous; open on to the sea, or, on the contrary, give on to a prison yard; are hung with washing; or alive with opals and silks; are hard as horsehair or soft as feathers—one has only to go into any room in any street for the whole of that extremely complex force of femininity to fly in one's face.5 (54% in)
- She made me feel, on the contrary, that instead of being serious and profound and humane, one might be—and the thought was far less seductive—merely lazy minded and conventional into the bargain.5 (83% in)
- Again if one is a woman one is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical.6 (12% in)
There are no more uses of "on the contrary" flagged with this meaning in A Room of One's Own.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
? —1 use
exact meaning not specified
- For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty.3 (53% in)
There are no more uses of "contrary" in A Room of One's Own.
Typical Usage
(best examples)