INCOHERENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does incoherent mean? 

• INCOHERENT (adjective)
  The adjective INCOHERENT has 3 senses:

1. without logical or meaningful connection

2. (physics) of waves having no stable definite or stable phase relation

3. unable to express yourself clearly or fluently

  Familiarity information: INCOHERENT used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INCOHERENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Without logical or meaningful connection

Context example:

a turgid incoherent presentation

Similar:

confused; disconnected; disjointed; disordered; garbled; illogical; scattered; unconnected (lacking orderly continuity)

fuzzy (confused and not coherent; not clearly thought out)

Also:

illogical; unlogical (lacking in correct logical relation)

irrational (not consistent with or using reason)

Antonym:

coherent (marked by an orderly, logical, and aesthetically consistent relation of parts)

Derivation:

incoherence (nonsense that is simply incoherent and unintelligible)

incoherence; incoherency (lack of cohesion or clarity or organization)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(physics) of waves having no stable definite or stable phase relation

Antonym:

coherent ((physics) of waves having a constant phase relation)

Domain category:

physics (the science of matter and energy and their interactions)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Unable to express yourself clearly or fluently

Synonyms:

incoherent; tongue-tied

Context example:

incoherent with grief

Similar:

inarticulate; unarticulate (without or deprived of the use of speech or words)

 Context examples 

The rest is all a more or less incoherent dream.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He was incoherent in his agitation.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

What's that jawbreaker definition about something or other, of Spencer's, that you sprang on us the other day—that indefinite, incoherent homogeneity thing?

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I fancy that the poor fellow murmured some incoherent delirious words, and that she twisted them into this meaningless message.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Children were enticed in as models, till their incoherent accounts of her mysterious doings caused Miss Amy to be regarded in the light of a young ogress.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Briefly, Watson, I am in the midst of a very remarkable inquiry, and I have hoped to find a clue in the incoherent ramblings of these sots, as I have done before now.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Thorpe then said something in the loud, incoherent way to which he had often recourse, about its being a d—thing to be miserly; and that if people who rolled in money could not afford things, he did not know who could, which Catherine did not even endeavour to understand.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

In an incoherent and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have endeavoured to give some account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance which first brought us together at the period of the Study in Scarlet, up to the time of his interference in the matter of the Naval Treaty—an interference which had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international complication.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)