incoherency

incoherency (usually uncountable, plural incoherencies)

1. The quality of being incoherent; lack of coherence.
   • 1686, Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv’d Notion of Nature, London: John Taylor, Conclusion, p. 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, London: T. Cadell, Volume 3, Part 6, p. 260,

     Pardon, madam, the haste and incoherency of scrawls penned at so trying a moment.

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,

     “It can make no change. You do not understand my position,” returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner.

2. That which is incoherent.
   • 1667, John Evelyn, Publick Employment and an Active Life Prefer’d to Solitude, London: H. Herringman, “To the Reader,”

     […] 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,

     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, April Hopes, New York: Harper, Chapter 1, p. 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.

• incoherence