countertype means A type (of person) that opposes and contrasts with another. It carries an Arena rating of 1421, earned across 7 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, countertype ranks #3,075 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #5,343 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #6,864 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #7,128 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words.
Why “countertype” is a great word
A person or thing that serves as an opposing or contrasting counterpart to another. From the prefix counter- (meaning 'opposite, contrasting') conjoined with type (meaning 'kind, sort'), first recorded in use between 1615–1624. Unlike an 'archetype' (an original model to be emulated) or an 'antithesis' (a stark, abstract opposition in logic), a countertype is a category defined entirely by its reactive contrast. It is the skeptic to the believer, the foil to the hero, the austere chair placed deliberately beside an ornate chaise longue—a silhouette given form only by the light of its rival, a quiet testament to the fact that we often know what a thing is only by knowing what it is not.
Etymology
From counter- + type.
noun
- A type (of person) that opposes and contrasts with another.e.g.“Sweaty, stammering and hyperactive, Lemmon seemed to embody the countertype of the monumental, granite-jawed leading men of the 1950s — stars like John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck .” — 2009 June 14, Dave Kehr, “Everyman, Tempted”, in New York Times:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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