incoherence

• IPA^(key): /ˌɪnkəʊˈhɪəɹəns/

incoherence (countable and uncountable, plural incoherences)

1. (uncountable) The quality of being incoherent.
   1. The quality of not making logical sense or of not being logically connected.
      • 1599, Thomas Bilson, The Effect of Certaine Sermons Touching the Full Redemption of Mankind by the Death and Bloud of Christ Jesus, London: Walter Burre, p. 145,

        HE DESCENDED, signifieth a voluntarie motion, where as the bodie dead hath neither WILL nor MOTION. […] Though therefore this exposition cannot be charged with falsitie, for Christ was trulie buried; yet may it not bee endured by reason of […] the improprietie and incoherence of the worde, that a deade corps should descend […]

      • 1680, Henry Care, The History of the Damnable Popish Plot, London: B.R. et al., Chapter 23, Section 2, p. 327,

        […] the said Lane is prevailed with […] to prefer an Indictment against Dr. Oates, for attempting to commit upon him the horrid and detestable sin of Sodomy; but the Grand Jury, by reason of the incoherence and slightness of his Evidence, did not think fit to finde it, but returned an Ignoramus.

      • 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 70,

        Bulstrode went away now without anxiety as to what Raffles might say in his raving, which had taken on a muttering incoherence not likely to create any dangerous belief.

      • 1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, Book 2, Chapter 10,

        Lily’s head was so heavy with the weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of a dream.

      • 2002, Geoffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Book 2, p. 99,

        My grandfather, accustomed to the multifarious conjugations of ancient Greek verbs, had found English, for all its incoherence, a relatively simple tongue to master.

   2. (obsolete) The quality of not holding together physically.
      • 1669, Robert Boyle, “The History of Fluidity and Firmness,” Section 16, in Certain Physiological Essays and Other Tracts, London: Henry Herringman, p. 182,

        […] if it [Salt-Petre] be beaten into an impalpable powder, this powder, when it is pour’d out, will emulate a Liquor, by reason that the smallness and incoherence of the parts do both make them easie to be put into motion […]

2. (countable) Something incoherent; something that does not make logical sense or is not logically connected.
   • 1690, John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, London: Awnsham Churchill, Book 1, Chapter 3, p. 26,

     […] Incoherences in Matter and Suppositions, without Proofs put handsomly together in good Words and a plausible Stile, are apt to pass for strong Reason and good Sense, till they come to be look’d into with Attention.

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 28,

     This was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of.

3. (psychiatry) Thinking or speech that is so disorganized that it is essentially inapprehensible to others.

• incoherency

• (quality of not making logical sense): unintelligibility

• coherence

• coinherence