counterexample

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — count sits at #450Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: counterexamples

A counterexample is one case that shows a general claim is false. Find a counterexample.

A single one is enough, which is what makes universal claims so hard to defend. A counterexample does no work against a claim that was only ever about most cases.

Definitions of counterexample

1nouncounterexampleOne case that shows a general claim is false.C1
“One counterexample brought down an argument nobody had questioned in years.”

counterexample is an example.

Where it comes from

Latin
computō
Medieval Latin
computātōrium
Old French
conteor
Middle English
countour
English
counter
English, today
counterexample

From counter- + example. counter Middle English countour, from Old French conteor (French comptoir), from Medieval Latin computātōrium, from Latin computō, equivalent to count + er. a doublet of cantore and computer and kontor.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Logic & Argument

Practise this word

counterexample in the wild

Tutte, who constructed a counterexample with 25 faces, 69 edges and 46 vertices.
Tait's conjecture
Several smaller counterexamples, with 21 faces, 57 edges and 38 vertices, were later proved minimal by Holton & McKay.
Tait's conjecture
A counterexample is a specific example that contradicts a claim, hypothesis, or generalization.
Counterexample
In logic a counterexample disproves a universally stated claim, and does so rigorously in the fields of mathematics and philosophy.
Counterexample
If the conjecture is false, a counterexample would take the form of a graph with minimum degree three having no power-of-two cycles.
Erdős–Gyárfás conjecture

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the conteor family

counter

counterexample — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

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