coherence

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
16
Words With Friends
18
Letters
9
Pronunciation
/kəʊˈhɪəɹ.ən(t)s/
See all 2 pronunciations
/kəʊˈhɪəɹ.ən(t)s/ · /koʊˈhɪɹ.ən(t)s/

Definition of coherence

5 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (countable, uncountable)The quality of cohering, or being coherent; internal consistency.
    “His arguments lacked coherence.”
    “Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: “That he’s an injury to the others.””
    “He would then put down his pencil and stare in front of him, and wonder in what respects the world was different—it had, perhaps, more solidity, more coherence, more importance, greater depth.”
See all 5 definitions

noun

  1. (countable, uncountable)The quality of cohering, or being coherent; internal consistency.
    “His arguments lacked coherence.”
    “Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: “That he’s an injury to the others.””
    “He would then put down his pencil and stare in front of him, and wonder in what respects the world was different—it had, perhaps, more solidity, more coherence, more importance, greater depth.”
  2. (countable, uncountable)The quality of forming a unified whole.
    “When I come to his connection with Blanche Stroeve I am exasperated by the fragmentariness of the facts at my disposal. To give my story coherence I should describe the progress of their tragic union, but I know nothing of the three months during which they lived together.”
  3. (countable, uncountable)A logical arrangement of parts, as in writing.
    “In a lesson on coherence in academic writing, students engaged in the following discussion on the online platform TodaysMeet.”
  4. (countable, uncountable)The property of having the same wavelength and phase.
  5. (countable, uncountable)A semantic relationship between different parts of the same text.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Latin haereō Latin cohaereō Latin cohaerēns Proto-Indo-European *-yós Proto-Italic *-ios Old Latin -ios Latin -ius Latin -ia Latin cohaerentiader. Middle French coherenceder. English coherence From Middle French coherence, from Latin cohaerentia. By surface analysis, cohere + -ence.

Hooks

1 extension · 1 back

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