Word.ws English Dictionary

incoherency

incoherency noun: the quality of being incoherent; lack of coherence.

Noun

incoherency (usually uncountable, plural incoherencies)

  1. (usually) The quality of being incoherent; lack of coherence.
    • […] 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...1686 (indicated as 168⁵⁄₆), R[obert] B[oyle], “The Conclusion”, in A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv’d Notion of Nature; […], London: […] H. Clark, for John Taylor […], →OCLC, page 409
    • Pardon, madam, the haste and incoherency of scrawls penned at so trying a moment.1785, Sophia Lee, The Recess, volume III, London: T. Cadell, part VI, page 260
  2. (countable, usually) A thing which is incoherent.
    • But that vvhich vvould beſt of all juſtifie me, and the ſeeming incoherencies of ſome parts of my Diſcourse, vvould be the noble Authors Piece it ſelf, becauſe of the Antitheſis, and the forms of his Applications.1667, J[ohn] Evelyn, “To the Reader”, in Publick Employment and an Active Life, with Its Appanages, such as Fame, Command, Riches, Conversation, &c. Preferred to Solitude: […], London: […] J. M. for...
    • 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.1757, David Hume, “The Natural History of Religion,” section 11, in Four Dissertations, London: A. Millar, page 70

Examples of incoherency in a sentence

  • You do not understand my position,’ returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner.1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Ease”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green...
  • Incoherency had overtaken his speech, but he was unaware of it.1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 117:

Synonyms of incoherency

Forms of incoherency

pluralincoherencies

Origin of incoherency

From in- + coherency or incoherent + -cy.

Questions about incoherency

What does incoherency mean?
Incoherency means the quality of being incoherent; lack of coherence.
How do you use incoherency in a sentence?
You do not understand my position,’ returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner.
What part of speech is incoherency?
Incoherency is a noun.
What is the plural of incoherency?
The plural of incoherency is incoherencies.

Words near incoherency in the dictionary

  1. incognoscible
  2. incogs
  3. incoherence
  4. incoherences
  5. incoherencies
  6. incoherency
  7. incoherent
  8. incoherently
  9. incoherentness
  10. Incoherents
  11. incohering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incoherency (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “incoherency.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/incoherency. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.