counterfactual
/ˌkaʊn.tə(ɹ)ˈfæk.tʃu.əl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.32 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
5
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Contrary to known or agreed facts; untrue.
adj
Of or in comparison to a hypothetical state of the world.
noun
A claim, hypothesis, or other belief that is contrary to the facts.
noun
A hypothetical state of the world, used to assess the impact of an action.
noun
A conditional statement in which the conditional clause is false.
Example Sentences
- "a leaderless disinformation campaign, with claims leaping from conspiracy theorists to state propagandists to alternative-media outlets and back—an ecosystem I call the Counterfactual Community."
- "What would have happened if those great Chinese voyages [by Zheng He] had continued? It's one of those questions in counter-factual history about which it is impossible to be sure."
- "The counterfactual 1982 of the novel plays variations on our historical record and contains clear allusions to the present."
- "Just as counterfactuals employ too much imagination to qualify as historical works, alternate history often labors under too great a load of artificial "facts" to take flight as fiction."
- "We can spin out complicated counterfactuals that justify the Iraq invasion, and complicated counterfactuals that make it look even worse."
- "The implicit counterfactual — that these members would support gun control if not for the $1,000 they received from the NRA — seems unlikely to me."
Etymology
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /ˌkaʊn.tə(ɹ)ˈfæk.tʃu.əl/