a priori vs contingent

a priori

adj
  • Presumed without analysis. 

  • Self-evident, intuitively obvious. 

  • Based on hypothesis and theory rather than experiment or empirical evidence. 

  • Developed entirely from scratch, without deriving it from existing languages. 

adv
  • In a way based on theoretical deduction rather than empirical observation. 

contingent

adj
  • Possible or liable, but not certain to occur. 

  • Dependent on something that is undetermined or unknown, that may or may not occur. 

  • Not logically necessarily true or false. 

  • Temporary. 

noun
  • That which falls to one in a division or apportionment among a number; a suitable share. 

  • A quota of troops. 

  • An event which may or may not happen; that which is unforeseen, undetermined, or dependent on something future. 

How often have the words a priori and contingent occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )