How to Use counterexample in a Sentence

counterexample

noun
  • And of course, that means it’s not a counterexample at all.
    Quanta Magazine, 26 Apr. 2021
  • The Hantzsche-Wendt group seemed like a fruitful place to search for a counterexample to the unit conjecture.
    Quanta Magazine, 12 Apr. 2021
  • Townsend, a member of the project, went to study the Ik to find a counterexample to generous cultures.
    Leah Shaffer, Discover Magazine, 25 Feb. 2019
  • This is not to say there aren’t counterexamples and gray areas.
    Jack Butler, National Review, 14 Mar. 2020
  • Sally and Thang were the de facto counterexamples in the trial.
    New York Times, 30 Aug. 2019
  • The counterexample that demonstrates the genius of his approach is France.
    Cameron Hilditch, National Review, 18 Sep. 2020
  • The Nevada case, then, provides a counterexample to that.
    Andrew Joseph, STAT, 28 Aug. 2020
  • And now the pandemic has served up a counterexample of how the government can, in fact, be helpful.
    Justin Lahart, WSJ, 25 June 2021
  • Of course, gut feeling and a lack of counterexamples don’t constitute a proof.
    Jack Murtagh, Scientific American, 22 Dec. 2023
  • Lately though, counterexamples seem to be massing at the gate.
    M.j. Andersen, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Feb. 2023
  • Yet the most poignant Cheney counterexample may come not from the world of politics but from that of media: Carlson.
    Erik Wemple, Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2021
  • The great counterexample, which comes up in just about every discussion of the subject, is the growth of Silicon Valley.
    Conor Dougherty, New York Times, 13 May 2017
  • Israel, which drafts both men and women, is often cited as a counterexample.
    Rich Lowry, National Review, 27 July 2021
  • The rare counterexample is that fabulous Fleabag episode in which Kristin Scott Thomas goes off on the merits of menopause and the revolutionary concept of looking forward to it.
    Tara Ellison, Vogue, 28 Jan. 2022
  • The best counterexample is 1987, when the stock market crashed in October but the economy continued to grow steadily.
    Josh Mitchell, WSJ, 16 June 2022
  • The counterexamples did not hold up, suggesting that the conjecture might be correct after all.
    Steve Nadis, Quanta Magazine, 16 Oct. 2023
  • But just a single counterexample can prove a theory false.
    Naomi Oreskes, Scientific American, 1 Aug. 2020
  • In just the last few days, practitioners in my field have changed their minds on critical issues based on a handful of examples and counterexamples.
    Neel Shah, STAT, 11 Apr. 2020
  • The upcoming wage cut in St. Louis presented a stark counterexample to the increasing minimum wage seen across the country.
    Madison Park, CNN, 7 July 2017
  • At the beginning of her article, Weintraub hit upon some of the core problems of many large drug companies and used Genentech as a counterexample.
    Aaron Rowe, WIRED, 6 Dec. 2007
  • In essence, Tao’s results says that any counterexamples to the Collatz Conjecture are going to be incredibly rare.
    Dave Linkletter, Popular Mechanics, 13 Sep. 2019
  • Moore pointed to North Carolina as a counterexample, where the population and economy have both grown in recent years while the state has slashed income taxes.
    Benjy Sarlin, NBC News, 22 Oct. 2017
  • Some cops are corrupt, as many leaders have been, but Hermes is a diligent and dedicated counterexample.
    Peter Debruge, Variety, 12 Aug. 2023
  • However, one strange counterexample is the contrast in lifespan among different sized dog breeds.
    Conor Feehly, Discover Magazine, 3 May 2023
  • One shining counterexample is a young man who used his speech to talk of himself self-deprecatingly — a rare ability for the highest-scoring of students.
    Luther Ray Abel, National Review, 9 July 2021
  • For a counterexample of how a time of intense political bitterness can start to tear this country apart, look back exactly half a century to 1968.
    Charlie Savage, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2018
  • Perhaps the sole counterexample is the sanctions that Congress overwhelmingly voted to impose on Russia for its election hack.
    Zack Beauchamp, Vox, 2 Apr. 2018
  • That civilization provides both a counterexample to the notion of man’s impermanence — and a warning.
    Jack Butler, National Review, 31 Dec. 2023
  • For comparison, video game consoles usually take an average of three to four years to drop to 50 percent of their original asking price, though many counterexamples can be found on either side of that mean.
    Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, 10 July 2017
  • Jack Avedon thought his son was soft and overly sensitive, and provided a grim counterexample by dumping Avedon’s mother and refusing to support her.
    Scott Eyman, WSJ, 11 Dec. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'counterexample.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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