incoherency
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From in- + coherency[1] or incoherent + -cy.[2]
Noun
[edit]incoherency (usually uncountable, plural incoherencies)
- The quality of being incoherent; lack of coherence.
- 1686, Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv’d Notion of Nature[2], London: John Taylor, Conclusion, page 409:
- […] Haste and Sickness made me rather venture on your good Nature, for the Pardon of a venial Fault, than put myself to the trouble of altering the Order of these Papers, and substituting new Transitions and Connections, in the room of those, with which I formerly made up the Chasms and Incoherency of the Tract, you now receive.
- 1785, Sophia Lee, The Recess[3], London: T. Cadell, Volume 3, Part 6, p. 260:
- Pardon, madam, the haste and incoherency of scrawls penned at so trying a moment.
- 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC:
- “It can make no change. You do not understand my position,” returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner.
- That which is incoherent.
- 1667, John Evelyn, “To the Reader”, in Publick Employment and an Active Life Prefer’d to Solitude[5], London: H. Herringman:
- […] that which would best of all justifie me, and the seeming incoherencies of some parts of my Discourse, would be the noble Authors Piece it self […]
- 1757, David Hume, “The Natural History of Religion,” section 11, in Four Dissertations, London: A. Millar, p. 70,[6]
- For besides the unavoidable incoherencies, which must be reconciled and adjusted; one may safely affirm, that all popular theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction.
- 1887, William Dean Howells, chapter 1, in April Hopes[7], New York: Harper, page 3:
- […] he took into his large moist palm the dry little hand of his friend, while they both broke out into the incoherencies of people meeting after a long time.
Synonyms
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ “incoherency, n.”, in OED Online [1], Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000, archived from the original on 2023-10-07.
- ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “incoherency (n.)”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.