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To put constraint upon; to restrain; to confine; to keep within bounds. [Obs., exept as used reflexively.] The king's person contains the unruly people from evil occasions. Spenser. Fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves. Shak.

To strive in opposition; to contest; to dispute; to vie; to quarrel; to fight. For never two such kingdoms did content Without much fall of blood. Shak. The Lord said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle. Deut. ii. 9. In ambitious strength I did Contend against thy valor. Shak.…

Strife in words; controversy; altercation quarrel; dispute; as, a bone of contention. Contentions and strivings about the law. Titus iii. 9.

Fond of contention; given to angry debate; provoking dispute or contention; quarrelsome. Despotic and contentious temper. Macaulay.

To make a subject of dispute, contention, litigation, or emulation; to contend for; to call in question; to controvert; to oppose; to dispute. The people . . . contested not what was done. Locke. Few philosophical aphorisms have been more frequenty repeated, few more contested than this. J. D. Morell.…

One who contests; an opponent; a litigant; a disputant; one who claims that which has been awarded to another.

The act of contesting; emulation; rivalry; strife; dispute. "Loverlike contestation." Milton. After years spent in domestic, unsociable contestations, she found means to withdraw. Clarendon.

To give greater effect to, as to a figure or other object, by putting it in some relation of opposition to another figure or object. the figures of the groups must not be all on side . . . but must contrast each other by their several position. Dryden.

ver the expenses of management, cost of insurance, and the policy value at the date of computation. This excess is called the contribution of the policy.

To dispute; to controvert. [Obs.] "Controversed causes." Hooker.

A disputant. [Obs.]

Relating to, or consisting of, controversy; disputatious; polemical; as, controversial divinity. Whole libraries of controversial books. Macaulay.

One who carries on a controversy; a disputant. He [Johnson] was both intellectually and morally of the stuff of which controversialists are made. Macaulay.

Contention; dispute; debate; discussion; agitation of contrary opinions. This left no room for controversy about the title. Locke. A dispute is commonly oral, and a controversy in writing. Johnson.

To make matter of controversy; to dispute or oppose by reasoning; to contend against in words or writings; to contest; to debate. Some controverted points had decided according to the sense of the best jurists. Macaulay.

Capable of being controverted; disputable; admitting of question. -- Con`tro*ver"ti*bly, adv.

A proposition which arises from interchanging the terms of another, as by putting the predicate for the subject, and the subject for the predicate; as, no virtue is vice, no vice is virtue.

The act of interchanging the terms of a proposition, as by putting the subject in the place of the predicate, or the contrary.

To make coördinate; to put in the same order or rank; as, to coördinate ideas in classification.

The act of coördinating; the act of putting in the same order, class, rank, dignity, etc.; as, the coördination of the executive, the legislative, and the judicial authority in forming a government; the act of regulating and combining so as to produce harmonious results; harmonious adjustment; as, a coördination of fun…