1. syntactically establishing a relation of contrast between sentences or elements of a sentence

    e.g. disjunctive conjunctions like `but', `or', or `though' serve a contrastive function

2. strikingly different
    tending to contrast

    e.g. contrasting (or contrastive) colors

    Synonym: contrasting

3. of words so related that one contrasts with the other

    e.g. `rich' and `hard-up' are contrastive terms

    Synonym: incompatible