different between incoherence vs incoherency

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??nk???h????ns/

Noun

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,^[1]

        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,^[2]

        […] 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,^[3]

        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,^[4]

        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,^[5]

        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,^[6]

        […] 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,^[7]

     […] 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,^[8]

     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.

See also

• incoherency

Synonyms

• (quality of not making logical sense): unintelligibility

Antonyms

• coherence

Translations

Anagrams

• coinherence

English

Noun

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,^[1]

     […] 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,^[2]

     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,^[3]

     “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,”^[4]

     […] 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,^[5]

     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,^[6]

     […] 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

• incoherence