as in intrigue
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Recent Examples of counterplot
Don Aucoin,
BostonGlobe.com,
31 July 2019
There’s something comforting about the normalcy of plot and counterplot, action and intrigue.
—
Mike Hale,
New York Times,
13 Jan. 2017
Noun
Bit by bit, the castle at Elsinore (broodingly rendered by scenic designer Lee Savage) turns into a stage for life-and-death plots and counterplots.
—
Don Aucoin,
BostonGlobe.com,
31 July 2019
There’s something comforting about the normalcy of plot and counterplot, action and intrigue.
—
Mike Hale,
New York Times,
13 Jan. 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for counterplot
Noun
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As group play winds down at the World Cup, the biggest intrigue might be not who finishes first in a four-team group.
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Their journey spans icy fjords, Byzantine intrigue, and the fabled Silk Road, blending Viking grit with ancient Chinese wisdom, unexpected alliances, and a touch of magic.
Verb
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The fair's conferences were held at the Art Institute, and on the current site of La Rabida Hospital was a recreation of the La Rabida convent in Spain, where Columbus plotted his voyages.
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Everyone loved it, without pretense, staying up late to watch it and then plotting our own stunts the next day.
Noun
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And yet, in spite of its Clark and Dearborn gambit and an hourlong finale that ties far too many bows on top of bows, Season 5 works because its artistic machinations are rooted in character over plot, and the characters are what matters.
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Ithaca, located among the Ionian islands of western Greece, acts as Odysseus’s north star, the destination he is prevented from reaching for 10 harrowing years by the machinations of Polyphemus’s vengeful father, Poseidon.
Verb
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The catastrophies that our heroine averts are awfully small potatoes — a bulldozer running amok, an amusement park ride speeding out of control, some prankish teenagers scheming to turn the girl’s shower into a steambath.
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Joining Purnell, Ora, and Haaland in the voice cast are Steve Speirs as King Erik, Anton Lesser as the scheming Lars, and Alan Carr as the Bard, an overly enthusiastic royal scribe.
Noun
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The Blacks’ defeat would be certain if not for dragons and subterfuge.
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There is a long history of subterfuge at World Cups — a long history of sharing injury information that isn’t exactly transparent or even accurate.
Verb
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Speaking of history, Algeria likely would have advanced in the 1982 World Cup, but two teams conspired to keep that from happening.
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In the three months before the shooting, Nunes and her son conspired to kill her boyfriend, Zaytsev, and collect the proceeds from his life insurance policy, prosecutors said.
Noun
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Because everyone will have access to the same information, AI will accentuate the value of personal connections, again promoting lineages and networks that at their most extreme may appear to be sinister establishment conspiracies.
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Previous cloud-seeding controversies Cloud seeding is now at the center of the rise in weather‑control conspiracy narratives after disasters, such as the tragic Texas floods of 2025 that killed dozens of people, many of them children.
Verb
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The work lies in making that interface feel truthful rather than contrived.
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Credibility gets strained pretty quickly as the playwrights contrive to get the characters to face each other in person.
Cite this Entry
“Counterplot.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/counterplot. Accessed 30 Jun. 2026.
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