a. [f. prec. + -AL.]
1. Connected with, containing, or using antithesis.
1583. T. Watson, Poems (1870), 116. The whole piller … is by relation of either halfe to the other Antitheticall or Antisillabicall.
1795. Mason, Church Music, III. 179. Parallel antithetical expressions, are … substituted for Rhythm and cadence.
1853. Robertson, Sermons, Ser. IV. ix. (1876), 112. The whole context is antithetical. Ideas are opposed to each other in pairs of contraries.
2. Characterized by direct opposition.
1848. Miller, First Impressions, xvii. (1857), 283. To bring Revelation in direct antithetical collision with the inferences of the geologists.
1860. Tyndall, Glaciers, II. § 26. 372. Each of the snowy bands … contributed to produce an appearance perfectly antithetical to its own.
