irreducibility

English

Noun

irreducibility (countable and uncountable, plural irreducibilities)

1. (uncountable) The quality or degree of being irreducible.
   • 1779, Percivall Pott, The Chirurgical Works of Percivall Pott, volume 3, page 305:

     I gave them account of what I had seen of the case, of my opinion concerning the irreducibility of the rupture, and that it had no share in the present complaint; at the same time desiring my colleague to examine for himself.

2. (countable) Something that is irreducible.
   • 1997, John S. Ransom, Foucault's discipline: the politics of subjectivity, page 130:

     There is plebs in bodies, in souls, in individuals, in the proletariat, in the bourgeoisie, but everywhere in a diversity of forms and extensions, of energies and irreducibilities.

Antonyms

• reducibility

Derived terms

• Abel's irreducibility theorem