counterfactual
Collocations
3ADJ.
implicit
VERB + COUNTERFACTUAL
call
COUNTERFACTUAL + NOUN
community, members
Definitions
adj
Contrary to known or agreed facts; untrue.
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.
Of or in comparison to a hypothetical state of the world.
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.
noun
A claim, hypothesis, or other belief that is contrary to the facts.
A hypothetical state of the world, used to assess the impact of an action.
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.
A conditional statement in which the conditional clause is false.
Thesaurus
Synonyms
Antonyms
Idioms & Phrases
Example Bank
6a 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.
WiktionaryWhat 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.
WiktionaryThe counterfactual 1982 of the novel plays variations on our historical record and contains clear allusions to the present.
WiktionaryJust 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.
WiktionaryWe can spin out complicated counterfactuals that justify the Iraq invasion, and complicated counterfactuals that make it look even worse.
WiktionaryThe implicit counterfactual — that these members would support gun control if not for the $1,000 they received from the NRA — seems unlikely to me.
Wiktionary