different between incoherent vs inscrutable

English

Alternative forms

• incohærent (archaic)

Etymology

in- +? coherent

Adjective

incoherent (comparative more incoherent, superlative most incoherent)

1. Not coherent.
   1. Not making logical sense; not logically connected or consistent.

      When we confronted her, she gave us a hasty, incoherent explanation.

      After just a few drinks, he becomes incoherent.

      • 1599, Ralph Brooke, A Discouerie of Certaine Errours Published in Print in the Much Commended Britannia, London, p. 35,^[1]

        By which thus still ouermuch busying your selfe in matters passing your skill, it maketh you so forgetfull, that oftentimes you are faine to vtter matters incoherent, and much contradictorie.

      • 1765, William Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses, London: A. Millar and J. and R. Tonson, 4th edition, Volume 3, Book 4, Section 4, p. 103, note z,^[2]

        […] this historian of men and manners goes on in the same rambling incoherent manner […]

      • 1881, Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1, Chapter 15,^[3]

        […] the big dark dining table twinkled here and there in the small candle-light; the pictures on the wall, all of them very brown, looked vague and incoherent.

      • 1980, Barry Unsworth, Pascali’s Island, Penguin, 1988, p. 154,

        It was as if he was in fear of being swamped, rendered incoherent, by the sheer marvelousness of what he was relating.

      • 2002, Julian Barnes, Something to Declare, New York: Knopf, Chapter 1, p. 10,^[4]

        The historian […] is a sort of novelist, but one who instead of inventing plot and character is obliged to discover them; who instead of setting characters in motion against one another with foreknowledge of their natures and destinies tries to guess at what often incoherent characters were up to amid a distraction of lies and suppressions.

   2. (obsolete) Not holding together physically; loose; unconnected.
      • 1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, London: Thomas Basset, The Epistle to the Reader,^[5]

        […] Some hasty and undigested Thoughts, on a Subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next Meeting, gave the first entrance into this Discourse, which having been thus begun by Chance, was continued by Intreaty; written by incoherent parcels; and, after long intervals of neglect, resum'd again, as my Humour or Occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement, where an Attendence on my Health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it.

      • 1695, John Woodward, An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodies, London: Richard Wilkin, Part 2, p. 110,^[6]

        That Sand-Stone does not still consolidate: i.e. that Matter which was, a few Years ago, lax, incoherent, and in form of Earth, or of Sand, does not become daily more hard and consistent, and by little and little acquire a perfect Solidity, and so turn to Stone; as others have asserted.

      • 1696, John Sergeant, The Method to Science, London, Book 3, pp. 228-229,^[7]

        […] sooner, may all the Material World crumble into Incoherent Atoms, or relapse into the Abyss of Nothingness, than that any Conclusion, thus deduced, can be False […]

   3. Not cohering socially, not united.
      • 1888, Samuel Moore (translator), Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1906, p. 25,^[8]

        At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.

      • 1961, James Baldwin, in James Baldwin: Collected Essays, New York: Library of America, 1998, p. 223,^[9]

        […] because I am an American writer my subject and my material inevitably has to be a handful of incoherent people in an incoherent country.

      • 1969, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, New York: Ace, 2010, Chapter 8,^[10]

        I was glad, now, to be out of Karhide, an incoherent land driven towards violence by a paranoid, pregnant king and an egomaniac Regent.

Synonyms

• uncoherent
• unintelligible
• unrelated
• disjointed
• desultory
• jerky
• disconnected
• discontinuous

Antonyms

• coherent

Related terms

• incoherence
• incoherently

Translations

Catalan

Etymology

in- +? coherent

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Valencian) IPA^(key): /i?.ko.e??ent/
• (Central) IPA^(key): /i?.ku.e??en/

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ent

Adjective

incoherent (masculine and feminine plural incoherents)

1. incoherent

Derived terms

• incoherentment

Romanian

Adjective

incoherent m or n (feminine singular incoherent?, masculine plural incoheren?i, feminine and neuter plural incoherente)

1. Alternative form of incoerent

Declension

English

Etymology

Borrowed into late Middle English from Late Latin ?nscr?t?bilis, from in- (“not”) + scr?t? (“to examine”), corresponding to in- +? scrutable

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??n?sk?u?t?bl?/
• Hyphenation: in?scrut?able

Adjective

inscrutable (comparative more inscrutable, superlative most inscrutable)

1. Difficult or impossible to comprehend, fathom, or interpret.

   Synonyms: ineffable; see also Thesaurus:incomprehensible

Derived terms

• inscrutability
• inscrutableness
• inscrutably

Translations

See also

• inexplorable

Noun

inscrutable (plural inscrutables)

1. One who or that which is inscrutable; a person, etc. that cannot be comprehended.

References

• James A. H. Murray [et al.], editors (1884–1928) , “Inscrutable”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volume V (H–K), London: Clarendon Press, OCLC 15566697, page 329.